
Glass V %.\3 
Book iiai 



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A 

True Vindication 

of 
Tlie SoutK 



In 

A Review of American 
Political History 



By 

MLnomas Manson IsJonvood 

Sometime U, S. Senator from Georgia 



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COPYRIGHT, 1917 

BY The Citizens and Southern Bank, 

AS Executor of the Will of 

Thomas M. Norwood 



Braid & Hutton, Inc. 

Printers. Stationers and Lithographers 
SAVANNAH. GA. 






CONTENTS 



Introduction i-xvi 

Chapter Page 

I. — Origin of the Puritans 1 

II. — Of the Period Preceding the Exodus from England 7 

III. — Puritan Fanaticism 9 

IV. — Puritan Nomenclature 13 

V. — Puritan Nomenclature (Continued), 23 

VI. — Slavery in Massachusetts : 27 

VII. — Slavery in Massachusetts (Continued) 36 

VIII. — Slavery in Massachusetts (Continued) 45 

IX. — Adams on the Puritans 52 

X.— The Situation in 1860- '61 62 

XL— Daniel Webster 66 

XII.— As to Webster's Oratory 75 

XIII. — Webster as Statesman and Patriot 86 

XIV.— Mr. Webster's Moral Attitude Considered—-^ 93 

XV. — Remarks on Webster's Reply to Hayne 100 

XVI.— Webster's Reply to Calhoun Considered 109 

XVII. — Further Discussion of the Reply to Calhoun 119 

XVIII.— Webster's Quibbling on Words 129 

XIX.— The Facts Were Against Webster 137 

XX.— Webster's "Parental" Fallacy 145 

XXI.— Webster's Misinterpretation of the "Preamble" 155 



Chapter Page 

XXII. — An Amazing Ignorance and a Suggested Speech 159 

XXIIL— The Right of Secession 167 

XXIV.— The Law and the Facts of the Question 179 

XXV.— The Question as Viewed in 1787 186 

XXVI. — Secession a Concrete as well as an Abstract Right_196 

XXVII.— The Eight Way to Determine the Question 202 

XXVIII. — Sovereignty and the Law of Nations 205 

XXIX. — The Human Law of Highest Authority 214 

XXX. — The Author's position Tested and Sustained by 

Hypothetical Cases 225 

XXXI.— What the Federal Government Was and Is 236 

XXXII.— The Difference Between "Delegated" and 

"Granted" 242 

XXXIII.— About the Word "Perpetual"— A Medley of 

Law and Fact 244 

XXXIV. — Some Comments on a Letter of Chief Justice 

Marshall 250 

XXXV. — Sovereignty and Allegiance 256 

XXXVI. — Sovereignty and Allegiance (Continued) 266 

XXXVII.— Citizenship 271 

XXXVIII.— More as to Sovereignty— The Most Signifi- 
cant Amendment 274 

XXXIX.— Abraham Lincoln 281 

XL. — Lincoln Viewed in Different Aspects 286 

XLI. — About Lincoln's Public Record, and a Puritan 

Abolitionist's View of Property and Title 291 

XLII. — Lincoln and the Chicago Convention that Nom- 
inated Him in 1860 — Seward, Beecher, Parker, 
and Other Abolitionists and Anarchists 300 



Chapter Page 

XLIII. — Of the Lincoln-Douglas Debate — Quotations from 

Lincoln's First Inaugural Address 306 

XLIV. — Lincoln Becomes a Usurper and Inaugurates War 313 

XLV. — Lincoln on ' ' Universal Law ' ' and the ' * Perpetuity ' ' 

of the Union 323 

XL VI. — Lincoln's Learning as a Lawyer Tested — His 

Contradictory Positions 332 

XLVIL— The Latin Maxim, "Facit Per Alium Facit Per 

Se," Applied to Lincoln 341 

XLVIII. — The Cunning and Treachery of Lincoln 350 

XLIX. — Lincoln's Deception of the People North and South_360 

L. — A Supposed Soliloquy 366 

LI. — Testimony of Personal Intimates About Lincoln 370 

LII. — Northern Faithlessness and Lawlessness 378 

LIII. — Riot of Lawlessness and Corruption — Profit and 

Loss of the War 382 

LIV. — Thieving, Swindling, Bribery, Perjury and General 
Corruption Rampant in the ''Party of High 
Moral Ideas" ^390 

LV.— The Social Loss 399 

LVI.— White Subjugation 40fi 

LVII. — John Brown — A Brief Essay on a Small Subject 409 

LVIIL— John Brown (Continued) 417 

LIX. — "The Great Conspiracy": A Rollicking Romance 

by John A. Logan 426 

Appendix. — Lincoln's Letter to Mrs. Browning; A Back- 
woods Wedding Comedy Staged by Lincoln ; 
Some Separate Paragraphs on Lincoln, Thaddeus 
Stevens, Beecher, Parker and John Brown; Dis- 
union Resolutions at Worcester, Mass. ; Rev. Dr. 
Fuller on Lincoln ; Lee and the Confederate 
Soldiers 437-4f0 

Errata 451 



PREFATORY NOTE 



Thomas Manson Norwood was born in Talbot county, 
Georgia, April 26th, 1830, and died at his home near Savannah, 
June 19th, 1913. Between those dates he had been for fifty 
years a prominent member of the legal profession in his native 
State, had served it as legislator in the council-chambers of 
its own capitol and in both branches of the Congress of the 
United States, and had presided for twelve years on the bench 
of the City Court of Savannah. At the time of his election to 
the State legislature he was a private soldier in the military 
service of the Confederate States. 

Judge Norwood's schoolboy j^ears were passed at the Cullo^ 
den Academj^ long a famous educational institution of Middle 
Georgia; and his collegiate education was received at Emory 
College, Oxford, Georgia, where he graduated in 1850. Twenty- 
five years later he returned there as a senator of the United 
States, and delivered the address from which is taken the 
beautiful tribute to Lee that is printed in the appendix in this 
book, A year or two before the alumni address he had made 
a notable speech in the Senate on the "Civil Rights Bill" — a 
measure devised by Republican partj^ leaders inspired by ani- 
mosity towards the South, then prostrate and bleeding under 
the rule of that sectional party, whose course had brought on 
the "War Between the States, with all its horrors and lamentable 
consequences. His "Civil Rights" speech, as it was called, gave 
Senator Norwood great prominence throughout the South, 
especially, not only because of the force of its argument, but 
because also of its felicitous satirizing of a measure so obnoxious 
to the Southern people. 

During the rule, following the War Between the States, of 
the Republican party in the South, when the elective franchise 
was taken from an educated white population of the highest 
type of civilization, and given to an uneducated black popula- 
tion of the lowest type, controlled in their exercise of the 
franchise by the white political adventurers from the North 



(called carpetbaggers) and the few native Southern whites 
(called scalawags) who were Republicans for revenue (of which 
two classes, in addition to the negroes, the Republican party 
in the South was composed) ; — during that dark period of 
American history, when that combination of such unsavory and 
infamous memory was — with the backing of the military power 
of the United States Government — in political control of the 
Southern States and holding its orgies in their capitols, one of 
its members was installed by it in the office of Governor of 
Georgia. His name was Bullock, He was a Northern man, and 
had been in the employ of the Southern Express Company a* 
Augusta before his political associates — the negroes, scalawags, 
and carpetbaggers — elevated him to the Executive Chair of the 
Empire State of the South. 

This Republican "Governor" and his Administration af- 
forded an inviting field for Mr. Norwood's pen and his distinc- 
tive style of sarcasm and invective, and he availed himself of 
it in a series of newspaper articles, over the signature of 
"Nemesis," that attracted more than State-wide attention 
and the authorship of which was for some time a subject of 
much and mistaken conjecture. Not long after their publica- 
tion the ci-devant Express agent resigned the office of Governor 
and fled the State, which then came again into the hands of its 
own, and the writer of the "Nemesis" articles was sent to the 
United States Senate. 

Judge Norwood was a Democrat "after the most straitest 
sect" of the Democratic political faith. He believed it to be 
a cardinal principle of that creed that governments derive their 
just powers from the consent of the governed. He knew that 
that principle was proclaimed to be a self-evident truth by the 
Declaration of Independence, written by the father of the Demo- 
cratic Party. He believed in the principles of State Sovereignty 
and State Rights, as they were set forth in the Virginia and 
Kentucky Resolutions of 1798- '99 — of which James Madison 
and Thomas Jefferson were the authors, and that were asserted 
by others of the founders and foremost statesmen of the 
Republic. He knew that those principles constituted the 
corner-stone of the American Union — the political edifice 
of which those patriots and statesmen were the architects, 



and that all the facts of its history show that that Union 
was not established by force — was not a government of force, 
but was a voluntary union of independent States, 

Knowing these great fundamental truths of American his- 
tory, he never questioned the right of a State to withdraw from 
that Union when to the State its withdrawal seemed necessary 
to secure its unalienable rights and its safety and happiness; 
and when the Northern States began and waged a war of 
coercion against the Southern States for having withdrawn 
from the Union when it seemed to them that withdrawal was 
necessary to obtain such security, he held that they — the 
Northern States — by that war wrongfully assaulted and violated 
those principles, and that the Southern States rightfully 
defended them against that assault; — that the South was right 
in its loyalty to those principles and the North criminally wrong 
in its disloyalty to them. And such, it can with entire truth 
be said, is the conviction of the living descendants of the men 
of the South who fought for those principles under the leader- 
ship of Robert E. Lee. They know that the result of that war 
— of twenty-two States against eleven Statesi — showed where 
the might was. They are equally sure that it did not show 
where the right was. The great illusion of the age — the notion 
that power could make right — has not found lodgment in the 
souls of the sons and daughters of Confederate sires. 

In his old age Judge Norwood bethought him to utilize the 
leisure that came with retirement from public life by writing a 
"book to establish" (as he says in the Introduction) "the justice 
of the South 's action before, during and after the War of 
Abolition between the Northern and Southern States in 
1861- '65." With characteristic resolution he began work upon 
the purposed book ; but neither the mind nor the body under the 
weight of eighty years can work with the vigor and endurance 
of an earlier time. Years steal strength from the one as from 
the other, and Judge Norwood had to yield to the encroachments 
and infirmities of age, and to answer the final summons, before 
he had brought his manuscript to the state of completion he 
contemplated, and arranged it for publication. What he had 
written, though, was enough to "prove his case," and to make 
the volume now published in accordance with his testamentary 
direction, under the title designated for it by himself. 



Time did not weaken Judge Norwood's sense of the crime 
of that war on the Southern States. It did not weaken nor 
soften his memory of the physical and mental suffering, the 
cruelties, horrors and agonies, inflicted by a devastating war on 
their people — and his people — only for their loyalty to primal 
American ideals consecrated by the blood of their Revolutionary 
fathers — only for claiming and contending for the right of 
political self-government proclaimed by the Declaration and 
won by the Revolution of '76, of which they sought not to 
deprive the people that attacked them. He neither forgot nor 
forgave that war's violation of the basic vital principle of 
republican government and of the American Constitution, nor 
the irreparable wrongs and calamities to his own State and 
section that followed in its wake; and while the fact that he 
wrote under the unabated influence of a vivid recollection of 
those calamities may properly be considered and given its due 
weight in connection with his characterization of individuals 
whom he believed chiefly responsible for them, it does not 
invalidate the indisputable historical facts in the book, which 
— alone, in and of themselves — constitute a vindication of the 
South. 

T. K. O. 



INTRODUCTION 



The chief purpose in writing this book is to establish the 
justice of the South 's action before, during and after the War 
of Abolition between the Northern and Southern States in 
1861-65, I regret deeply that some one of our able Southern 
men has not presented the law involved in the struggle be- 
tween the free and slave States as I shall endeavor to give it. 
This regret does not arise from loss of what might be the 
effect on the minds of people of the North. It is because the 
young men of the South have, to some extent, been left to 
draw conclusions from the mass of falsehoods slandering their 
forefathers that have issued from the Northern press, in books, 
magazines, weekly and daily papers, school-books and diction- 
aries for three-quarters of a century, but especially since the 
year 1861. 

I purpose to show that the South was in the right and was 
justified in every issue between her and the North, from the 
first division between them when a geographical line was 
drawn and the associated States were designated by the 
words — the North and the South. 

I purpose to show that in 1865 the Northern and Southern 
colonies were two distinct peoples, of different origin, although 
from the same island ; that in temperament, education, opinions 
on government — political and ecclesiastical, habits, training, 
mental and moral, tastes and conduct, they were antipodal; 
that these fundamental differences existed during the Revolu- 
tion of 1776, and when the Constitution was agreed to; and 
that they have .continued to this day. If these statements be 
true I do not suppose there can be cavil over the conclusion 
that the union of two such peoples to establish a common 
agency to conduct, in many respects, their individual busi- 
ness, was an egregious blunder. The open history of the States 
under a written agreement made in 1787 is a demonstration of 



that blunder. Two peoples who can not live together without 
constant wrangling, .abuse, fighting, anld wholesale murder 
should never come together. 

When religious fanatics claim that negroes they hold in 
slavery are personal property, and sell them to others and 
guarantee the title, and afterwards demand of the purchasers 
to free those negroes, and — only because the demand is re- 
fused — muster men and with arms kill the masters and free 
the negroes, argument is not needed to prove on whose hands 
is the blood lof Abel. I anticipate a denial of the fact that 
negro slavery caused the war, and the assertion that Secession 
caused it — by saying, I am not now attempting to give what 
the Abolitionists and Nationalists assign as the cause. They 
shut their eyes to all the wrongs done to the South during 
sixty years before Secession, and fix them steadfastly on the 
proximate cause, Secession, and assert that there would not 
have been war if the Southern States had not seceded. This 
is only surmise. Who can tell what would or would not have 
occurred had Secession not occurred? It is folly to reason with 
one who assumes to prophesy what millions of fanatics obeying 
no law, human or divine, and who were encouraged, upheld 
and protected in deeds of lawlessness, theft, and even murder, 
by a majority of Legislatures in fourteen Northern States who 
enacted "Personal Liberty, Laws" — would or would not do at 
any time. But this is not the place to enter fully into that 
question. It will be taken up at the proper time. 

The responsibility for the disruption of the Union and the 
butchery of a half-million men, the anguish of millions of 
mothers, wives and children, and the destruction of the Re- 
public, will be fastened on the guilty, and in this book I have 
contributed my mite to aid in fixing that guilt. Others will 
follow and take up the work. The question is one of Law, and 
Law alone can and will settle it. In all the writings by the 
Nationalists and all others in the North, not one, so far as I 
have read or heard, has ventured to discuss the legal views 
of the War. They all followed the Daniel Webster of 1830, 
and damn the Daniel Webster of 1850. The South reverses 
that order, and condemns Webster's speeches in the debates 
with Hayne and Calhoun, and holds that he became convinced 

ii 



of his ruinous opinions expressed in those two debates, and 
endeavored to atone in 1850 for the impending destruction of 
the Union caused by his speeches in 1830-3. 

The stock "argument" at the North has been patterned 
after the method of argumentation that is practiced by negroes 
in the South. In a quarrel between two negroes, tBe one who 
can bawl louder, talk faster and has the better wind, and, 
especially, who can roll out the foulest, filthiest and most 
obscene words, strengthened at short intervals with coarsest 
oaths, is always adjudged by the promiscuous audience acting 
as umpire, to be the conqueror. The parallel is perfect, except- 
ing the adornment by profanity. Since the war the air has 
been burdened Avith declamation by slanderers, some so ignor- 
ant they do not know the difference between a horse-chestnut 
and a chestnut horse — between a parallel and a parallax. Imi- 
tating furious negro debaters and logicians in a quarrel, they 
have kept the air in rapid and violent agitation by exploding 
in it such bombs as "Rebel! Rebellion! Treason! Traitor! 
Conspirators! Conspiracy! The Great Conspiracy!" That 
argument growing monotonous and not being sufficiently stimu- 
lating to the audience, these artists in vilification rise a few 
keys higher to C fl^at and screech "Arch-Traitor!! Architects 
of Ruin ! ! Damnable Heretics ! ! Villainous Rebels ! ! Archi- 
tects of Anarchy ! ! Base Anarchists ! ! " 

One of these Bombastes Furiosos, who for ten years has 
had his hand on the door knob of a lunatic asylum, in order to 
popularize his "Life of Thomas H. Benton," baptized Jeffer- 
son Davis an "Arch Traitor," and not a few of these patriots 
for bounties, first, and then, pensions, in annual camps, held to 
demand bigger pensions, decorated by their censure Robert E. 
Lee, calling him a "Traitor," and dreading to face him even 
in marble standing in the "Hall of Fame" in Washington. 

These mouthing logicians pay no attention to the wisdom 
of the Bible. It tells us "Evil communications corrupt good 
manners." Ever since the Puritan fanatics made the discovery 
that the negro is their equal, and made him their companion 
and bed-fellow, and have received him into their families as 
a son-in-law, they have absorbed from him not only his ability 
as a logician, and his method of argumentation, but have 
acquired, also, two of his native and irrepressible talents; one 

iii 



is, he is so economical with Truth he starves it down to 
famine, and the other, his undying devotion to other people's 
property. 

Some of the Rebels and Traitors, when they read these 
compliments by Nationalists, are too much disposed to forget 
another wise precept of the Bible — "Answer not a fool accord- 
ing to his folly, lest you, also, be like unto him ; ' ' for they, in 
abbreviated sentences, say some impertinent things about "Bull 
Run" — " Chancellorsville, three men to one" — "old women and 
girls hanged as witches" — "Quakers whipped," "ears cut off, 
and then hanged," — "white children sold as slaves just to get 
money, — w^omen, preachers, teachers, stealing negroes," — 
"Treason and perjury in Personal Liberty Laws passed by 
Puritans," "Higher Law than the Constitution," — "Constitu- 
tion a league with Death and covenant with Hell," — "Negroes 
made slaves by statute in Massachusetts, and law never re- 
pealed," — "Statute of Massachusetts forbidding marriages of 
negroes and whites repealed, and now it's a playground and 
Paradise for yellow brats and grown-up Bismarcks. " 

Inferiors should not answer their superiors, yes, their 
supremes, in that manner. It is not respectful, even by servants, 
but when Rebels and Traitors and Conspirators so far forget 
their subordinacy as to answer furious words that signify 
nothing by blurting out history, the offense is lese majeste, 
which amounts to treason. Besides, the truth hurts. The 
great lawyer, James L. Petigru, of Charleston, South Carolina, 
was once assailed by an irate man who called him a scoundrel. 
He said — "I didn't mind that because I knew it was not true. 
He then called me a liar, and I didn't notice him, as that was 
not true. He then called me a Federalist, and I knocked him 
down because that was the truth." 

The responsibility for that horrible internecine war can 
not be settled by epithets and abusive adjectives. They are 
the weapons of raucous fishmongers ; the seourings of Billings- 
gate; the pointless arrows of vanquished Parthians; the final 
refuge of impotent malice; a confession of chagrin, mortifica- 
tion and shame over failure to overcome a foe one-fourth in 
number, without refusing exchange of prisoners, without the 
aid of hired Hessians and negro warriors, and without binitally 
sacrificing the lives of brave men in prisons — companions in 

iv 



arms — who had been cunningly duped into service to free 
negroes, by the cry — "Save the Union from destruction by 
Rebels and traitors!!" 

These word-mongers are so vengeful that, had they the 
power, they would not let it "do a courtesy to their wrath." 
They would, without the form of justice, with rope, hasten 
pell-mell to "the sour apple tree." They are the heroes who 
sleep as the battle rages, and then march in quick-step to the 
distant echoes of the drum-beat, to share the spoils with carrion 
crows and thieves. They revel in the toggery of mock heroics, 
and, mayhap, are brave enough to daringly head a corps of 
camp-followers on the perilous expedition to kick a dead lion. 
But— 

"The little dogs and all, 

Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart- — seel they bark at me." 

The purpose of this book being as stated, the aim of the 
writer is to find the truth of history. Knowledge of the history 
of the war waged by the Northern or Free States against the 
Southern or Slave States, is not essential to arrive at the right 
or wrong of the war. The truth that determines the justice, 
or the right or wrong of that struggle, is to be found in the 
history of all the States in the Union, that preceded the be- 
ginning of that horrible and inhuman fratricide. When the 
truth shall be found we shall find the responsibility for that 
demoniac sacrifice by Mammon to Moloch on the hills and in 
the vallej's of sixteen States. 

The right or wrong does not turn on facts alone. The key 
to the right or the wrong is what is known among civilized 
peoples as Law. That is the generip word. Its branches are 
Civil Law, Constitutional Law, and the Law of Nations. It 
will be seen that all three must be invoked to sit in judg- 
ment on the question of guilt or innocence in this case of the 
arraignment of Sovereign States. It will further appear that 
of these three Justiciaries, the Law of Nations is the Chief — 
the predominant — not only because it is the only law by 
which disagreement between nations can be settled, but be- 
cause it is law of the highest authority that men have ever 
devised. It is the law which has been laboriously compiled 
line by line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a 



little extending through thousands of years, by sovereigns 
who had to agree to do justice in order to obtain security. In 
theory, by that law, the weakest nation or republic is in every 
respect the equal of the mightiest. The republic of San 
Marino, or the kingdom of Montenegro, before the tribunal of 
Nations, is as great as the empire of Eussia. It is by this law 
the guilt or the innocence of one or the other party to that 
butchery must be determined. 

The cry of Rebel — Traitor — Conspirator — during the war 
served its purpose. As a slogan it was very effective, just 
as many a criminal has escaped by raising the cry of "stop 
thief." But that cry no longer avails, although it still 
reverberates in hundreds of anaemic folios as they fall from' 
the printer's press and start out "like the tale of an idiot, full 
of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Of these dumb de- 
claimers — many now smothered in slumber by benevolent dust 
— speaking through printer's ink, some notice has been taken 
in the following pages. One — perhaps the Boanerges of this 
roaring multitude — ^has been of much assistance to the writer, 
not so much by what the man who fathered the book compiled 
by another, vindictively said, as by his inability to understand 
the effect of what he said. This pompous and laborious en- 
deavor to vilify the South and all Southerners is "THE 
GREAT CONSPIRACY," by John A. Logan. If every utter- 
ance of the charge of "Rebel — Rebellion — Traitor — Treason — 
Conspirator — Conspiracy" — eaeh and all invariably with a 
capital initial — were a separate indictment, and his stentorian 
voice were proof of each charge, the South would be fairly 
depopulated, and her best blood would lie in cold obstruction 
by Henry Wirz and that poor old woman, Mrs. Surratt — the 
victims of national fury and suborned and suppressed testi- 
mony. 

But the removal, by near fifty years, from that vociferation 
to stimulate what, by misnomer, was called patriotism, has 
made it inaudible to normal ears, and we care nothing for 
epithets and vituperation. We are before the judgment seat 
of impartial History. Reason, that fled to brutish beasts, is 
again on her judgment seat, is deaf to clamor and abuse, and 
calls for facts and law. The Allen clan that gathered in moun- 

■vi 



tain fastnesses and, descending armed to the plain, invaded the 
Temple of Justice and attempted to decide legal questions by- 
powder and bullets, has learned that the Temple still remains, 
that Justice still presides, and that outraged law upheld by- 
civilized men will vindicate itself by the hangman's rope. The 
Abolitionists, Freesoilers and Puritan fanatics who haled the 
Huns, the Bavarians, the Hessians, the Mafia and the Africans 
from their lairs to this shore, baited by a fraction of an as- 
sassin's pay, to adjudicate a constitutional question, and to 
settle the Law of Nations by cannon, bullets, bayonets, and 
starvation in dungeons, after mobbing Justice and hurling 
her from the Temple, are learning that, though the greater 
number of cannon may overwhelm, they are not judges to 
determine laws by which every nation must be governed or 
perish. 

They are learning that the commands — "Thou shalt not 
steal" — "Thou shalt not kill" — did not expire with Moses on 
the Mount. 

They are learning that when "the parents eat sour grapes 
the children's teeth are set on edge;" that when fathers and 
mothers, in presence of their children, steal what their fathers 
sold and guaranteed to be property, the children are very apt 
scholars and have not dishonored their parents by refusing 
to follow their example. 

They are learning that the world, although "a mighty maze 
is not without a plan." 

They are learning that the Ear that hears and heeds the 
cry, from the ground, of the blood of one child, is not deaf 
to the cry of the blood of a half million of His children, and 
the cry of millions of broken-hearted widows and beggared 
orphans. 

They are learning that He who laid the foundations of His 
footstool did not place Avarice as its cornerstone; did not 
exalt Greed, Selfishness, Injustice, Inhumanity and Oppres- 
sion among its pillars; did not take care of sparrows and for- 
sake His last and highest creation — a little lower than His 
angels — to be butchered in Coliseums at the turn of brutal, 
pagan thumbs, nor to be murdered on battlefields and tortured 
to death in dungeons by Christian Mammonites. 

vii 



They are learning that "Righteousness" alone "exalteth a 
nation" and that fidelity to man is the highest evidence of 
fidelity to God. They are learning all these lessons, and shall 
learn many others, but they are very dull, stupid, refractory, 
obstinate pupils. Their insatiable appetites are too keen in 
devouring the luscious viands of Belshazzar's feast to raise 
their eyes, for even a hasty glance at the wall. The sound of 
revelry and the roar of commerce rushing through the streets 
drowns the rising hungry growl of St. Germain just below 
their feet. 

They have yet. to learn the profound meaning of Him who 
announced the simple truth — "The poor ye have always with 
you." When building this footstool He laid no stone to be 
used to ' ' grind the faces of the poor. ' ' He hears the Oily Gam- 
mons, wily flatterers and cajolers of the poor to keep them at 
the grind, and through the thick blanket of the night He 
sees these hypocrites gather and combine to rob by cunning 
the trusting victims of their flattery. 

This work deals first with the Puritan — the word being 
used in its collective sense. He is traced from his first appear- 
ance on the stage of the world's theatre through the many 
scenes of his kaleidoscopic career down to the present time. Hq 
is exhibited in his multiform and contradictory views and 
attitudes. He will be seen as saint and as sinner; as a fugitive 
from persecution, and the originator of worse persecution. He 
will appear in the white robe of Personal Liberty for all man- 
kind, and soon after as a pirate on the high seas capturing 
negroes to deprive them of personal liberty. Denouncing the 
Church of England as a persecutor of conscience, he rivalled 
the Inquisition in persecution of conscience; and neither sex 
nor age could mitigate his ferocity. 

It will be seen that from his first disturbance of the public 
peace, centuries ago, two overmastering passions have marked 
his bloody footsteps to this hour, to-wit: Religious Fanaticism 
and Insatiable Avarice. From these two trunks have grown 
many branches, or collaterals. But, as they intertwine and at 
time bear fruit that may be assigned to either trunk, it is 
difficult to classify them. Among them, prominent and distinct, 
as products of his fanaticism, are Intolerance, Religious Perse- 

viii 



cution, Superstition, the halliieination of being God's Chosen 
People, and, therefore, of being in His confidence and counsel. 

From this branch, it will be seen, sprang the Puritan's 
peculiar and deadly system of religion — a Theocracy like that 
of the Israelites, and this offshoot ramified even to the length 
of christening his children with Jewish names, and other names 
of marvelous invention but indicative of the Puritan's holi- 
ness. 

Another branch growing out of his hallucination of close 
communion with God is his inordinate egotism that burdens 
him with the duty to regulate and direct mankind and the 
business of the Earth. Hence, his irrepressible itching, at times 
becoming violent and murderous, to intermeddle with other 
people's business. From this egotism springs another shoot. 
It is his claim of right to do what he will not permit 
others to do. 

The Puritan's insatiable Avarice, "like the stems and roots 
of the bamboo," is without limit and takes any and all direc- 
tions. He became a bloody, cruel pirate on the high seas for 
two hundred years. When this wide field so full of revenue 
was denied him by law, he turned land pirate, feeding on the 
white race, his appetite growing by what he fed on — and, as 
will be seen, that is still his chief sustenance and daily occu- 
pation. It will be shown that when his slave-trade was for- 
bidden and that feeder of his Avarice was cut off, his religious 
fanaticism, assuming the delusive shape of philanthrophy, went 
out to the negroes he had enslaved, and his pliable and elastic 
■conscience prompted him to resort to theft as a justifiable 
means of restoring to freedom the slaves he had sold. But, far 
worse than theft, he resorted to lawlessness in every form ; 
he repudiated the most solemn contract made by his ancestors, 
while enjoying its benefits; he attempted to annul the Con- 
stitution by acts of the legislatures ; he damned his forefathers 
for making "a covenant with Death and an agreement with 
Hell ; " he defied all laws that barred his will and purpose ; he 
finally made war on the men who had bought his slaves; he 
murdered a million whites to free three million blacks, and 
signalized his venom, hate, malice and brutality by trying to 
force the master to be servant under his slave. 

ix 



Running through this current of blood will be seen an 
illuminating and predominating streak of Avarice commingled 
with his fanaticism. Philanthrophy was the cry, but gain was 
the goal. 

The contrast between the Cavalier and Puritan is given. 
For this exhibition, Massachusetts and Virginia are selected as 
the typical colonies and States; the first settled exclusively by 
Puritans, the second mainly by Cavaliers. 

I do not purpose to write or to rewrite a history of the 
Puritans. He is an enthusiastic novitiate, or has time to waste, 
or is one of the thousands of lineal descendants, who would, 
at this late day, attempt to throw a cheerful beam upon the 
dismal and worse than erratic wanderings of the Pilgrim 
Fathers. To me the task is impossible. As I have said, 
thousands have tried to justify, or to exculpate the conduct of 
that special band of religious fanatics. Including histories, full 
and partial, sermons, magazines, pamphlets, platform addresses, 
speeches and lectures, I have estimated the defenders of that 
abnormal people at a very low figure. Indeed, in the brazen 
art of self-laudation they have no parallel in all history. They 
have exalted themselves by encomiums to the Seventh Heaven, 
and, with sincerity, have been damned to the Nether Pit. A 
stranger, after wading through the tomes written by the 
descendants and other advocates and defenders of the Pilgrim 
Fathers, is reminded of the Psalmist, who says — "Righteous- 
ness exalteth a nation," and he feels the inferiority experienced 
by a dwarf suddenly translated to the land of Brobdingnags. 
But, when he turns to the story as told by those not of the 
Puritan blood, nor moved by its fanaticism and egotism, he 
discovers himself looking down on the pigmy race of the 
Lilliputs. 

The philosopher, statesman, or theologian who delves into 
the unnumbered volumes written in advocacy or defense of the 
Puritans, looks in vain for one broad, liberal principle that could 
be adopted as the corner-stone, or arch key, to any system of 
philosophy that would be accepted by even the unthinking 
multitude ; or for any principle that an advanced, rational peo- 
ple would adopt as a part of their government; or for any 
view, or tenet, of religion that would not be flouted by any 
other people, Christian or pagan. 



They have occupied a niche far more conspicuous than ap- 
plausable, in the history of England and America for three 
hundred and fifty years, and when the inextinguishable light, 
gloomy and darkly visible as it is, of those frantic and bloody 
centuries, is turned on the pages of those volumes in their 
defence, the philosopher, statesman and theologian are re- 
minded of at least two notable records of filial devotion, one 
biblical, the other, modern. The first is the filial duty per- 
formed by two of' Noah's sons when they walked backward to 
hide the nakedness of their Pilgrim Father who had fallen 
under the burden of a bacchanal debauch, and the other is the 
instinctive and devotional precaution moving each defender, 
without concert of action, before he begins liis apology, to 
step to the closet, where hang the thousands of skeletons, and 
to lock the door hard and fast. Like the mediums who claim 
communion with the spirit world, they, too, turn down the 
light before the performance begins. One practices fraud on 
the spectator by commission, while the other attempts to de- 
ceive the reader by fraud — dishonest by omission. One, in 
cataleptic rigor, from the weird gloom, throws on the scene a 
spectral hand or an imaginary form or face. The apologist 
calls from the dead centuries a ghostly host, invests them with 
the sacred robe of Samuel, and delivers an eulogium, that, if 
true, would raise them to a level with Christian — Bunyan's 
hero. One is of an imaginary man clothed by the genius of 
Bunyan with Christian virtues; the other is of real men in- 
vested by deception and fraud with imaginary \artues. 

It has been said by credible 'authority that there are more 
readers of the Bible than any other book; that next in popu- 
larity in Christendom is "The Pilgrim's Progress." It is my 
opinion that more books, pamphlets and stories have been writ- 
ten, and more sermons and post-prandial speeches delivered on 
the Puritans than any other subject. One writer is credited 
with 382 books and pamphlets on this prolific provocative of 
the cacoethes scribendi. It is safe to say that no man or 
woman was ever so self-'saerificing as to read one-tenth of these 
productions. I have read not a few, and I have not found one 
of these histories that is fair, full and impartial. The large 
majority are by the Puritan Fathers and their descendants 
of the full or diluted blood, or by religious or political parti- 



XI 



oans. it is safe to say there was never such a loud cry and 
so little wool. This may be asserted — and the assertion made 
good by "profert in open court" — that these histories bear 
indisputable proof of carefully studied art to conceal the mul- 
tidudinous evil and to exaggerate the minimum of good the 
Puritans did during the first hundred years of their free-hand 
in New England. 

Some of these writers, called by courtesy historians, begin 
their stories at the landing on Plymouth Rock in 1620, some 
start when this religious sect was hidden away in Holland; 
some, when they were holding conventions at Scrooby, but 
not one that I have read follows them from their earliest known 
appearance, about the middle of the sixteenth century, through 
their devious paths in England and Holland, and along their 
bloody tracks in Massachusetts. Not one has dared to lay 
bare their innate ferocity, their flinty asceticism, their cruel 
and deadly fanaticism, their boastful and absurd chauvinism, 
when patriotism was synonymous with the Puritan's creed in 
Church and State ; the weighing the value of their country in 
the same scales in which they weighed the price of their slaves 
stolen in Africa and sold in Barbadoes, West Indies and the 
South; their hypocritical cry for freedom of conscience; the 
anomaly that they fled from England to enjoy personal liberty, 
and straight-way despatched hundreds of low-deck vessels to 
Africa to buy or steal negroes for no other purpose than to 
deprive these barbarians of their freedom; their persistent 
claim of their right to secede from the Union and denial that 
any other State had that right; their open rebellion for three 
centuries against all laws, civil and ecclesiastical, except those 
of their own making, or that conformed to their opinions and 
selfish purposes. There are some explorers in the field of 
occult literature who believe they have discovered in Milton's 
Lucifer a tribute to the Puritan character. On this occult ques- 
tion I would not venture an opinion. But I do not believe that 
Milton belittled the figure of Lucifer by taking the Puritan 
as his prototype. But, belief and conjecture aside, if the his- 
tory of those Puritans who fled to Massachusetts, as written 
by themselves and their partisans, be true, Milton, in the 
rebellious attitude of Lucifer has typified the Puritan who 
"would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." 

xii 



To the unbiased mind it seems that when these historians 
decided to write, and before they began, they went to the 
door of the closet where hung the skeletons of the innocent 
victims of the Puritans' ferocious fanaticism, and of the many 
black thousands of their insatiate greed, and locked it hard 
and fast, and by some necromancy, or self-imposed hypnotism, 
or through subliminal control, they forgot all that was wicked, 
and cruelly and brutally criminal, and remembered only the 
few palliative virtues that here and there were visible. Keep- 
ing their sight steadfastly on the oasis far (ahead, they over- 
looked the dismal, dreary desert "where not a flower ap- 
peared." The drama to be presented was known by all the 
audience. It had been rehearsed before the public thousands 
of times by unpaid thespians, and the leading actors were Dr. 
Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyl always appeared gentle, though 
uncouth; meek as Moses, wise as Solomon, strong as Ajax, 
brave as Agamemnon, humble as Francis of Assisi, continent as 
Joseph, more in the ^confidence of God's purposes and provi- 
dences than the Prophets of old ; a saint and martyr perse- 
cuted by his King, the Pope, the Established Church, Luther- 
ans, and Baptists, Calvinites and heretics ; while the real actor 
and hero in this bloody tragedy, Mr. Hyde — who, to silence 
his accusing conscience and to serve his God, hung men, 
women and children for opinion's sake, and, as head buccaneer 
of the Atlantic, battened between low-decks a hundred 
thousand negro slaves who starved and floated to death in 
their own filth and were fed to pursuing sharks from the shores 
of Africa, to Newport, Marblehead, Salem and Boston — re- 
mains tied behind the scenes until the curtain falls. Such, as 
I read the histories of the Puritan Fathers, has been the per- 
sistent plan of their historians of the whole and diluted Puri- 
tan Blood and of their prejudiced partisans. So the record 
has run, so the innocent and ignorant have been taught for 
three hundred years and up to the year 1903, when a halt was 
called, when the word "check" was sounded in this game of 
cheat, — by one of the Puritan whole blood ; one, as he tells us, 
of direct lineal descent from two Puritan preachers — Cotton 
Mather and Thomas Shepard. 

The debate between Daniel Webster and Robert Y. Hayne 
in 1830, and between Webster and John C. Calhoun in 1833 

xiii 



are reviewed. And, as Webster was by far the best product 
of Puritan civilization, he is reviewed as man, citizen, patriot, 
orator and statesman. And as Webster then and there planted 
the mine and laid the fuse that exploded in 1860 and rent the 
Union, it is shown how and why he did it. This leads to dis- 
cussion of States Eights, of the Federal Government, their re- 
lations, their respective powers and the measures of Federal 
powers. And this brings under discussion the question of 
Secession — first, as a right per se, and, second, as a right 
coupled with a duty at the time and under the surroundings 
of the Slave States when they seceded. 

Following these subjects the corollary as to the right of 
States in the Union to make war on other States is considered. 
The question is discussed in this form, because, as the reader 
will observe, the writer holds that the action of the Federal 
Government in making war on the Confederate States was the 
action of the Northern States — as they supplied the army, the 
navy, and the money, the federal government being nothing 
more than machinery used by the States. Connected with the 
question of Secession are the subjects of Sovereignty and Al- 
legiance. Under this head is noticed the views of Chief Jus- 
tice Jay, Chief Justice Marshall, Judge Story, Judge Oooley, 
and other Federalists. 

As Abraham Lincoln was President and on his own motion 
began the war, his first Inaugural is analyzed, and a view of 
him is given from his birth to his death. He is looked at as 
a boy, as a young man, as a lover, a politician, congressman, 
orator, abolitionist, lawyer, statesman, patriot, negrophilist, 
warrior, a generator and purveyor of unprintable stories, a 
hero and Savior of the Constitution and Union. The kind of 
Union he saved is presented in a separate chapter. Some may 
think that too much space has been given to Abraham Lincoln. 
But they probably have not thought of the hundreds of volumes 
that his worshipers have devoted to this wonderful hero. His 
only rival among Northern adorers is John Brown. Brown 
was apotheosized the day he was hung for murder. He was 
compared to Christ, because he had sanctified the gallows as 
much as Christ had made the Cross adorable. And now Lin- 
coln is eulogized as the greatest man on Earth since the death 
of Christ. The writer, therefore, does not agree that too much 



XIV 



has been written in this work of a human being of such trans- 
cendent greatness, especially when he remembers that the public 
has been deprived of the pleasure or spared the nausea from 
reading a large part of the best, because the truest, biography 
of this Colossus written, by the man who knew him most inti- 
mately as his law partner for eighteen years before his death. 
This candid biographer of the true Lincoln that took the public 
behind the scenes, before the low comedian was spangled and 
tricked out in the toggery of the stage as the world's greatest 
tragedian, was speedily suppressed, and an expurgated edition 
now delights the devotees ignorant of the imposition and cheat. 

As the mind of the reader, like a true juryman, stands im- 
partial between the North's two greatest heroes, a chapter is 
also given to John Brown. It is a singular coincidence that 
the friends of both heroes believed they were insane; one 
permanently, the other, with lucid intervals. Lincoln's friends 
feared he would commit suicide, and he so strongly believed 
he would that he dared not carry a pocket knife. Says Mr. 
Herndon: "During these spells of insanity, or melancholia, 
knives and razors and every instrument that could be used for 
self-destruction were removed from his reach." One attack 
in 1835, in his 26th year, was so alarming that James Speed 
took hjm to Kentucky and kept him there six months. This 
Speed was afterwards appointed Attorney General of the 
United States by Lincoln. 

The closing chapters contain some reflections on conditions 
in the republic before the Northern States became lawless, and, 
thereby, forced the South to seek peace and domestic tranquil- 
ity by Secession, and then followed her with bayonets, bullets, 
cannon, cavalry, and the torch, to drive her back into a 
Union ; and on the conditions and results of that war from its 
close to the present time. It will be seen that the witnesses 
that have been called in to testify have been summoned from 
the North, with a few exceptions. The latter are named and 
located so the reader can judge of their reliability and fair- 
ness. Books and records quoted can not be doubted, as they 
are accessible and belong to history. The conclusion drawn 
that the responsibility for the war and for all the deaths, 
wounds, diseases, anguish, suffering, brutality and devasta- 
tion rests on the soul of Abraham Lincoln and the people who 



XV 



followed him, will, no doubt, be received in the North with 
some misgiving. The lassertion that whatever perjury, rebel- 
lion and treason preceded and caused secession were committed 
in the North, and were repeated and emphasized if possible 
by making war on the South, may not be admitted. In prose- 
cutions for crime the sequel sometimes has been that the 
defendant has been acquitted and the loud-mouthed prosecu- 
tor has been tried and convicted of the crime. 



XVI 



CHAPTER I. 

ORIGIN OF THE PURITANS. 

The origin of tbat angular section of the human race known 
the world over by the name Puritan, raises a question of wide 
geographical extension. That they are of the white race no 
one has suggested a doubt, but of what nationality there is 
a difference of opinion. One of the elect — "one of the tribe 
of Judah" — one bom and educated in New England — one 
highest in authority in that cultured corner — says the Puri- 
tans are Armenians, or came from Armenia. This authority is 
John Fiske, one of the greatest scholars, essayists, philosophers 
and historians of New England. He was a voluminous writer, 
and — it may be added — luminous on subjects he understood, 
being the author of fourteen books and of much miscellaneous 
matter. In his history entitled "Beginning of New England," 
he assigns as his reason for tracing the Puritans back to 
Armenia, that the Greek word — Cathari — means Puritans. 

In the Bulgarian tongue they are known as Bogomilians, or 
men constant in prayer. They accepted the New Testament, 
denied any mystical efficiency to baptism, frowned upon image- 
worship as no better than idolatry, despised intercession of 
saints, and condemned the worship of the Virgin Mary. Their 
ecclesiastical government was in the main Presbyterian, and 
in politics they showed a decided leaning toward democracy. 
They wore long faces, looked askance at frivolous amusements, 
and were terribly in earnest. They moved westAvard through 
the Balkan peninsula into Italy, and thence into southern 
France, where toward the end of the twelfth century we find 
their ideas coming into full blossom in the great Albigensian 
heresy. From France they passed over to England — at what 
time Fiske does not state. 

While this is to a very slight degree probative, from the 
fact that in all time no other people was called Puritans, and 
no other languages but the Greek 'and English have that word, 
still, it is far from being satisfactory. There is however, cor- 



2 TRUE VINDICATION OT THE SOUTH 

roborative evidence in several facts, one of which is mentioned 
by Fiske, to-wit: That the Puritans migrated from Armenia 
many centuries before they appeared in England, and during 
their several migrations, they were in war on account of 
religion. This is a good biography of Puritans so far as it 
goes. The other fact, not given by Fiske is, that the Armenians 
for more than 3,000 years were in constant turmoil, warfare 
and subjection. From 2,000 years before Christ to 1200 A. D., the 
Armenians passed under nine dynasties and were finally ab- 
sorbed by partition into Russia, Persia and Turkey. When 
the "Puritans" (Catharists) emigrated they passed through 
Turkey, skirted along the northern border of Italy, drifted 
into Northeastern France, and there fell in with the Albigenses, 
and mixed up with them in their struggle for life against the 
armies of Pope Innocent III. The remnant that escaped the 
sword of that pious Innocent wandered on until they reached 
England, where trouble soon began. 

If the theory of Fiske be correct, we can understand the 
turbulence and insurrectionary conduct of the Puritans in 
England, and the ferocity of their religion when they reached 
America. Environment shapes not only the physical develop- 
ment of fauna and flora, but it controls the physical, mental, 
and moral qualities of mankind. A people who had been a 
football for Europe and Asia for three thousand years, and 
had to endure the different whims, commands and cruelties of 
Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Russians and Turks, fol- 
lowed by the brutal persecutions of Pope Innocent III, had the 
iron driven into their souls so deep that revenge, cruelty and 
brutality became their ruling passions, and descended to their 
children almost as inevitably as the color of their skin. They 
became a tribe of Ishmaelites — their hands were against the 
human race. 

No wonder is it they rebelled against all restraint, physical 
and spiritual, and kept the established church of England 
seething and boiling like the troubled sea. No wonder is it 
they avoided the haunts of men and betook themselves, at 
first, to the barrenness and heather of Nottinghamshire de- 
scribed by the English scholar, Edward Arber, in "The Story 
of the Pilgrim Fathers," as without roads, with a few strag- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 3 

gling villages, among them Scrooby, a Post Office ; and Gains- 
borough — the former saved from oblivion by the presence of 
Cardinal Wolsey when he retreated before the wrath of his 
King, Henry VIII, and the latter remembered as the spot to 
which George Eliot gave the name, St. Oggs, in "The Mill on 
the Floss" — the pseudonym for the river Trent by which still 
stands the mill she immortalized as Dorlcote Mill. 

No wonder is it that when landed in America, with none to 
molest them or make them afraid, free as the roving Indians, 
and ferocious as the beasts of the forests, their avarice — 
tenderly veiled by Francis Parkman, one of their own family, 
under the soft and gentle phrase, "excess in the pursuit of 
gain" — reached its slimy, cruel tenacles across the Atlantic, 
and drew into its empty and insatiable maw slaves from Africa 
and digested them into gold. 

No wonder is it that Indian warriors captured, not as 
"Rebels" and "Traitors," but in open warfare, were, by 
thousands sent to market as slaves in the Barbadoes and West 
Indies, and converted into cash, among them the Queen of 
Philip, King of the Pequods, and their son, a lad. 

No wonder is it that an Inquisition was set on foot claimed 
to be by Divine approval (says Parkman), and called the Re- 
ligion of Christ, and under its charity and love men and 
women were dragged at the cart-tail, "whipped through three 
towns," their ears cut off, and then hanged till dead — all in 
the name of and to honor the Lord. 

No wonder is it that white children — one a tender girl of 
14 years — brother and sister, for the offense of poverty that 
prevented payment of a fine of twenty pounds for not attend- 
ing "religious service" conducted by the Inquisition, were 
sentenced by the High Court of Boston to be sold as slaves, to 
end their joyous lives, day and night, working with negro 
slaves in the Barbadoes — and this, to put money in the Puri- 
tans' purse. 

No wonder is it that the descendants of Armenian servants 
under foreign rulers for over 3,000 years had lost, if they ever 
possessed, the sense of honor that is the chief and strongest 
bond, the surest anchor of safety to the weak, between civilized 
nations, and that their fanaticism and avarice over-rode the 



4 TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 

only bond between the sovereign States in the Union — denied 
its authority to bind the Puritans, as they were bound only by 
a "Higher Law," while insisting with bullet, bayonet and 
icannon that the Southern States had to obey the bond. 

No wonder is it that after preaching Secession and threat- 
ening to secede for forty years, these descendants of Armeni- 
ans, controlled by avarice, denied/ in 1860 that any other State 
had the right to secede. 

And it was as natural as for the sow to return to the wal- 
low, that, impelled by avarice, the Puritans waged fierce and 
relentless war, with such barbarous practices as leaving their 
own soldiers — dupes of a false appeal to enlist — to perish in. 
prisons and "dungeons" after their foes had offered to ex- 
change them. 

After that barbarity, and death sentence passed on their- 
own companions in arms, what simpleton would express sur- 
prise that men and women of the best blood of England, with 
bayonets at their breast, were manacled and fettered and 
delivered up to the rule and ignorance and lusts of their own 
slaves, by these descendants of menials of three thousand years 
servitude in savage Asia. 

This origin of the Puritans is boldly stated by one of their 
kind and kin. He bore to his grave the imprimatur of New 
England — which is tantamount to the Northern People — as 
well as the diploma and seal of Harvard University. His cre- 
dentials are of high authority and — I was about to say — beyond 
denial or question at the North, but in the blazing light of 
history it is beyond the ken of any mortal to tell what Puri- 
tans will not assert — will not deny or repudiate. They as- 
serted land then denied the divinity of Christ. They asserted 
for forty years the right of New England to secede, and denied 
in 1833 the right of any other State, or States to secede. They 
denied that the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution was 
binding on them. 

This sketch of Armenia's history given above is in the book 
of Fiske. On the assumption that his statement of the origin 
of the Puritans is correct, I give the sketch to account for the 
monstrous mental and spiritual teratology of that people. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 5 

There is another theory of their origin which is easier to 
believe as it is less involved. It is that the Puritan stock had 
been growing on the ground of England centuries before their 
outbreak at Scrooby. All writers — even Fiske among them — 
say they first appeared in Nottinghamshire — Scrooby being a 
rendezvous. Ethnically there seems to be no dispute except 
that made by Fiske, but in qualities of mind, in spiritual adapta- 
tion to existing social and political order and organism of the 
age, they are what botanists and zoologists have labelled as a 
"sport," They sprung from the common stock, but, by a 
hidden, undiscoverable process acting on the germ in cunning 
Nature's laboratory, the offspring dishonors the parent and a 
lusus naturae appears, and propagates its kind. From under 
the roof that has sheltered a dozen offsprings of sane and 
sound parents sometimes issue eleven model types of manhood 
and womanhood, and the twelfth goes forth an incorrigible 
monster in crime. Even from the highest type of civilized and 
Christian men and women there comes to life an albino. The 
latter is an affliction very rare — the farmer is not infrequent. 
Either theory — that of Fiske or that of a "sport" — accounts 
for the abnormality of the Puritan. 

A third and the last hypothesis explains the mental obliquity, 
but not the moral turpitude. As the mental precedes the moral 
condition, it will be seen that, whereas, in single instances, it is 
sufficient explanation, yet, when applied to millions running 
through a period of four or five centuries, it is not satisfactory, 
because it does not solve the factor of persistent heredity. This 
theory requires, as does the first, a reference to history that 
runs not further back than the Reformation. 

The Reformation by Martin Luther began near the middle of 
the fifteenth century. But it was not the dawn of that spiritual 
illumination. As in the beginning John the Baptist was the 
forerunner of Christ, so Wycliffe prepared the way for Luther. 
Botli preceded Gutenberg, but Wyclifife's translation of the 
Bible was copied often by hand and widely distributed and 
read. The masses before that translation knew little of that 
repository of the Written Word for which their famished souls 
thirsted, and that little, for a thousand years, had been strained 
through the stingy lips of pjriests. Wycliffe supplemented his 



6 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

translation with treatises, pamphlets and tracts to such a num- 
ber, as one writer says, they "baffled calculation." They 
stealthily crossed the British Channel, and were welcomed with 
joy in huts and palaces, and two hundred, by papal order, were 
burnt in Bohemia alone. Thus the dawn of the Reformation 
was in England. The common people who had hungered cen- 
turies for the word read this forerunner with avidity, and grew 
restive under the teachings of the clergy, A century or less 
later Martin Luther rose up and shook off his fetters. He threw 
fuel on the fire kindled by Wycliffe. 



CHAPTER n. 

OF THE PERIOD PRECEDING THE 

EXODUS FROM ENGLAND. 

Nearly all books and other laudatory writings on the Puri- 
tans that have filled libraries were composed by themselves 
and their descendants. That impartiality should mark the 
tone of these family records, or that truth should be the base 
line to which all should conform, is not to be expected. Much 
of the inspiration that aroused the zeal of the aiithors came 
from exaggerations composed of tradition and misstatements 
called history. I speak now of what preceded the exodus from 
England. 

There is nothing that excites so vehemently the sympathies 
of civilized men as the narrative of physical agony, mental 
anguish and spiritual suffering that a person or a people under- 
goes on account of religious faith. There is witchery in the 
dim past, just as there is in the natural world, that magnifies 
objects seen through haze. The sun appears more than twice 
as large at the horizon than at its zenith. Time has magnified 
women of ordinary statute into Amazons; has increased the 
glory of Galahad; multiplied the army of Xerxes; made mar- 
velous, not to say enviable, the gastronomic capacity of the 
Romans, and, even later, of our English ancestry, and the 
physical strength of the Greeks. We reach widely different 
conclusions after reading stories told by Ariosoto and Mun- 
chausen ; and history recited by Robertson, Green, Bancroft, or 
Ridpath. And it is this perversion of the light of hsitory that 
has cast a secred halo around the heads of the Puritan Fathers. 

An epitome of the history of this people in England can 
be stated in very few words. This arose from the spiritual 
unrest, the civic turmoil, the mental unbalance that followed 
the defiance of the Vatican by Martin Luther. The religious 
world was upheaved. Then came the "confusion worse con- 
founded" when the Bible was printed and every man and 



8 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

woman who could read became its interpreter. From that 
time to the emigration to America, the Puritans were a law 
unto themselves. They hooted the Catholics, they jeered the 
Lutherans, they hated the Calvinists, they defied the Estab- 
lished Church and the Acts of Parliament, and especially the 
Act passed in the 35th year of the reign of Elizabeth, A. D. 
1593. They set up a church of their own and worshipped, in 
contempt of the statutes, when, how and where they pleased. 

The consequence was what they called persecution. That they 
were right they no doubt, believed, because they were religious 
fanatics. That they were in the wrong no one can doubt 
who is not a religious fanatic, and who knows their history 
after they got unbridled control of their eoelesiastical and civil 
government in America. 

When the Puritan is stripped of his tinsel crown of martyr- 
dom in England, of his forged passport to the heart of Chris- 
tian sympathy, of his bicentenary badge worn on his breast — 
as the beggar wears his cry "Help the Blind" — smeared with 
his own blood by his own hands, he stands like Mokanna un- 
veiled, the most repulsive, cruel, bloodthirsty, selfish and ag- 
gressive as well as ludicrous figure that ever sprang from a 
Christian people, bearing the Cross as the symbol of their 
Faith. In fact, his martj^rdom is similar in kind but not in 
degree to that which John Brown suffered at Harper's Ferry. 

I beg to say that I do not include ^11 Puritans in the above 
characterization, nor shall I include all in what shall follow. 
I am speaking of those who settled in Massachusetts and spread 
out over New England. There were a few good and great men 
of that Faith who did not leave England — such as Milton, 
Bunyan and Baxter. They were enthusiasts but they kept 
within the bounds of enthusiasm. The colony that swarmed out 
from Scrooby when stirred by the royal tipstaves, gave free 
rein to their enthusiasm that ran wild and swept them over the 
border far into the quagmire of fanaticism where they have 
cast up mire and mud for three hundred years, and the end 
is not yet. 



CHAPTER in. 

PURITAN FANATICISM. 

Since the dawn of authentic history four disastrous waves 
of fanaticism on religion have swept over the world with most 
destructive results to the human race. The first was when 
Mohammed issued from his cave with the divine message com- 
mitted to his keeping by Allah, and, slowly mustering his hosts, 
started out with the Koran in one hand and the sword in the 
other to offer to men of all creeds the sacred privilege to take 
the Koran, or the sword. Rising in the first half of the seventh 
century, it swept rapidly over Persia, Greece, Egypt, Spain and 
India. It then turned westward into central Europe, bearing 
down all opposition, until it broke on the plain of Tours, and 
its refluent current settled over the classic ground of Greece 
and over Asia Minor, where it has lain a thousand years, another 
but far more repellent Dead Sea, coveted by all nations, but 
protected by the danger of approach. 

The second wave of this singular type of fanaticism was 
heaved into destructive action by the potent voice of a rabid 
monk — Peter, the Hermit, in the eleventh century. This time 
the Christian world was the aggressor. Under Pope Urban II. 
Europe was largely depopulated by the craze to rescue from 
polluting hands the sacred sepulchre at Jerusalem. Four times 
this tidal wave rolled Eastward, the first — a conglomerate mass 
of men in armor, men in sackcloth, and women and children — - 
some babes in the arms. But, finally, the Moslem fanatics van- 
quished the Christian fanatics, and by the capture of Constanti- 
nople established the Crescent steadfast on European soil. After 
the forests of Europe and the arid sands of Arabia were sown 
with human bones, and excepting some knowledge of a few of 
the Arabs' arts, nothing remains but the bloody pages of history, 
and the addition of the word "Crusade" to the English 
vocabulary. 

The third wave was when Chirstians rose against Christians 
at the instigation of bloody Innocent III, when the sword, the 



10 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

dungeon, the rack, the fagot and torch, the hot spikes of the 
iron bed — ^the.auto da fe — ^forerunners of the guillotine — were 
the missionaries of the Inquisition to convert heretics and to 
spread the Gospel of the Prince of Peace. 

Of the fourth and the last it may be said — ''Time's 'vilest' 
offspring is the last!" It was and is the religious fanaticism of 
the Puritans. Their historian, John Fiske, gives them an honor- 
able pedigree — that is, if honor shall be due on acount of age 
only. But it is not necessary to hark back to the eighth century 
to find them in Armenia, and to trace their tortuous and rebel- 
lious course through eight centuries, during which they kept 
the atmosphere of Europe as hot as it was destructive. The only 
value attaching to Fiske 's ancient pedigree, if true, is the 
demonstration of the imperishable quality of the Puritans' 
fanaticism. It runs parallel in length of time with that of the 
Mohammedans, or the Turks. The distinctive features of the 
two religions is in the direction of their lust. That of the 
Turks runs to women — while the Puritans' runs to gold. 
Religious fanaticism and avarice distinguish the latter. 

The last religious fanaticism began to foment in England 
in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth century it appeared 
at first like a cloud over the barren heather of Northampton- 
shire. It gathered volume and spread to Holland. Thence it 
rolled across the Atlantic, where, unrestrained by law, it became 
a law unto itself of such anomalous and hydra-headed shapes 
as we shall have a glimpse of in the following pages. Yes, the 
Puritans' fanaticism was the vilest of all. The following pages 
will demonstrate this charge to the satisfaction of every man 
not a Puritan or already prejudiced in their defense. That the 
reader may have a foretaste of the facts on which this charge 
is founded, a very brief outline is here submitted. 

The Puritans left England because they could not get justice 
there ; because they were denied freedom of conscience, freedom 
of speech and personal liberty ; because they were persecuted ; 
because they were denied the privilege to publish books relating 
to their Faith. As soon as established in the colony they began 
to persecute all who would not subscribe to their Faith; to 
suppress freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of 
conscience, freedom of the press. They banished all non- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 11 

conformists on sentence of death by hanging should they return, 
and accordingly they hanged those who ventured to return — 
men and women. They had but one court to hear, try and give 
judgment in cases civil, ecclesiastical and criminal. From its 
judgment, or sentence, there was no appeal — ^no escape. They 
punished with pillories, bilboas and stocks, by whipping men 
and women on their bare backs while dragged at the cart-tail, 
through many towns, and by cropping off ears, and by hanging. 
These barbarities were inflicted for minor misdemeanors, after 
the victims failed to pay fines imposed. Indians captured in 
war were sold into slavery with negroes ; white children, unable 
to pay fines, were sentenced to be sold into slavery for life in 
the "West Indies. Their own records will be given in proof of 
these deeds and of many others. They came to this continent 
to enjoy personal liberty. Within sixteen years after landing 
they became the most active pirates engaged in seizing of 
negroes in Africa to deprive them of personal liberty by making 
them and their posterity slaves for life. This "industry" was 
conducted with zeal and enthusiasm for two hundred years. 
Here was the Puritans' avarice in full operation. Religious 
fanaticism and avarice — twin monsters — like Sin and Death 
guarding the gate to Hell, that none might escape. 

But religious fanaticism is not only imperishable ; it is invul- 
nerable. Its subject may be hanged, drawn and quartered, but 
its spirit will take refuge and find a lodgment in another body. 
It is, in a sense, a verification of the Greek metempsychosis. 
With the Mohammedan it has survived the death of thirteen 
centuries. Like the White Plague, it is transmitted from sire 
to son. Like another secret human malady, it contaminates 
whomever it touches and destroys whom it contaminates. These 
facts and reflections bear directly on the agitation by the Aboli- 
tionists. Isaac Taylor, one of England's foremost scholars, 
about the close of the eighteenth century, in his able work on 
Fanaticism, says : 

"Such transitions of strong and turbid emotions from one 
channel to another are not unusual. If the torrent of feeling 
be choked on one side, it swells and bursts a passage in another ; 
and strange as it may seem, it is a fact that the gentle and genial 
affections have a specific tendency, when cut off fr'^rn their 



12 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

natural flow, to take the turn of rancour q,nd ferocity. The spirit 
baffled in its first desires and defeated, but not subdued, sud- 
denly meets a new excitement, although altogether of a different 
order — combined with the novel element and rushes on it knows 
not whither. ' ' 

The fanaticism of the Puritans on religion was scotched by 
the clause in the Constitution forbidding interference with one 's 
religion. A dam was thus thrown across the current, but the 
current was not removed nor destroyed. As morality is an 
essential to religion and as conscience is essential to both, the 
Puritans made negro slavery a question of conscience. While 
the slave trade was permitted by the Constitution, their con- 
science could not detect its immorality. The reason is that the 
second domineering passion of the Puritans — Avarice — was 
being glutted, and the surfeit satisfied conscience, which, like 
the boa constrictor after a gorge, quietly slumbers until aroused 
by hunger. And as the surfeit by the slave trade continued for 
two hundred years, the slumbering conscience did not wake 
until the gorge of Avarice was cut off by denial of its pabulum. 
Negro slaves in the North had been found unprofitable long 
before the right to import negroes was denied by the limitation 
in 1808. Even that experience could not awaken the Puritan's 
conscience. But, when Avarice could no longer rake in the 
ducats, its twin passion — Religious Fanaticism — awoke and dis- 
covered that negro slavery was an abomination in the sight of 
God, and as the Puritans were His special vice-gerents, they felt 
constrained by conscience to sweep it from the face of the earth. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PURITAN NOMENCLATURE. 

The nettle "Danger" drove New England and the Southern 
States together in 1776. From it they "plucked the flower, 
Safety," but the nettle flourished and grew like the green bay 
tree for more than a century. It ceased to be exotic and became 
permanently domesticated. The union was a misalliance and 
from the beginning the nuptials were celebrated by incessant 
bitter bickerings, criminations, recriminations, domestic quar- 
rels and family combats that blazed at last into open war. The 
parties to the union were of different social rank, held widely 
variant views of morality, justice, humanity and personal 
liberty, and, judging from practical results, they worshiped diff- 
erent Gods. For the religion of one was gentle, persuasive, 
charitable and tolerant ; while the religion of the other was in- 
tolerant, cruel, ferocious and bloody. According to the infallible 
interpreters of the Puritans' God, He never relented or repented 
as did the God of the Jews. If in the two cities of the plain there 
had been, not twenty, or ten, or five righteous men, but ten 
thousand, and but one unrighteous, their God would have con- 
sumed the cities with a rain of fire. This is but a meagre outline 
of the irreconcilable differences between the two parties to the 
"indissoluble union" (as Mr. Webster viewed it in 1830), formed 
in 1787. The facts on which this outline is predicated will 
appear at the proper times and under appropriate heads as I pro- 
ceed with this discussion, 

"When ethnologists undertake the difficult labor of tracing 
the origin and relation of different branches of the human race, 
one of their methods is to study their languages, their memorial 
inscriptions, and the similarity of labial sound. When no written 
language can be discovered they resort to names given to 
natural objects, as rivers, mountains, plains and animals. When 
a people had a written language, however remote the age of 
their existence, it has been the sesame that opened to paleogra- 
phers and philologists the degree of civilization attained by that 



14 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

people. Language is the detective that discovers the secrets of 
the heart, as well as the operations of the mind. By it we can 
know, not only the limit of a man's education, but, also, his 
associations — the company he keeps. As Cuvier could take a 
tooth, or jawbone, and with it construct the frame of the animal 
to which it belonged, even one of the mastodon order, so, 
although a people may have passed into oblivion so long ago that 
their marble temples and statues, their images of bronze, undoi* 
the erosive tooth of Time, may be mingled with the dust of the 
desert, yet the etymologist can scan their language and tell us 
that people's customs, food, drink, egoism, or altruism, their 
form of government, their religion, their gods and goddesses, the 
degree of their refinement, knowledge of the arts and the 
sciences, their hero-worship, and to what degree they loved and 
honored their ancestry — their great men and women. 

As Virginia and Massachusetts were the first and mother 
colonies in North America, and as from Virginia the South was 
mainly settled, and from Massachusetts the other New England 
territory and the Northern and Western territory were largely 
colonized, let us apply to these two colonies a few of the tests 
spoken of above to see if we can determine the characters of 
these two peoples. Of course, the test by language has no bear- 
ing on this question, as both spoke the same tongue. It is to the 
matter of egoism, or altruism, of customs and laws, of religion, 
of liberty of conscience, and of pride of ancestry, and honor paid 
to their heroes and distinguished dead that I shall invite atten- 
tion. And, first, as to the last named characteristic of the two 
colonies. 

A people who love and honor their parents and great men 
adopt every method they can devise, within reasonable limits, to 
perpetuate the memory and glory of their kin who were great in 
any station and endeavor, whether military, civic, or scientific. 
One of the most obvious and usual methods is to perpetuate their 
names by visible objects and records. They write biography in 
their* geography as well as in their books. To their children ajnd 
the inquiring stranger within their gates they point with pride to 
the monuments they have erected to perpetuate the deeds of 
heroism and the achievements in whatever field, of their 
ancestors. Palestine was decorated by the Jews with rude monu- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 15 

ments of stone in testimony of deeds, events, and even of dreams 
they cherished the memory of, and desired to transmit by legend 
and signs to future generations. And archaeologists are to day 
excavating and sweeping aside the rubbish that Time has piled 
over those tokens of admiration and reverence, to identify them 
with the records of history. Every Spartan who passed the 
defile of Thermopylae contributed a stone to form the sacred pile 
where fell Leonidas and his immortal Three Hundred. A book 
could be filled with such testimonials of pagan hearts. As pagan - 
hearts were thus moved by altruism and filial love, what should 
we not expect of a boastful Christian people whose oral and 
printed praise of their ancestry and of themselves can not be 
exaggerated, and whose self -laudation, like Tennyson's brook, 
"flows on forever?" 

What has Massachusetts done in this particular for her great 
men ? Look at her map. She has fourteen counties that bear the 
following names : Barnstable, Berkshire, Bristol, Dukes, Essex, 
Franklin, Hampden, Hampshire, Middlesex, Nantucket, Norfolk, 
Plj-mouth, Suffolk, Worcester. 

Two men are honored — Franklin, an American, and Hamp- 
den, an English hero and patriot, but in no sense a Puritan. 
Surely the Puritans did not intend to honpr Essex — an Eliza- 
bethan courtier of the most abject servility. The other twelve 
counties bear unaccountable names — English and Indian — all 
of the neuter gender. 

The names of her postoffices show the same lack of rever- 
ence, respect, and of State and family pride. Of nine hundred 
postoffices, less than two and one-half per cent bear the names 
of distinguished persons. Of the two per cent, eleven were 
Englishmen, to-wit: Blackstone, Chatham, Chesterfield, Car- 
lisle, Grafton, Hampden, Hardwick, Mansfield, Marlboro, 
Walpole, Wellington. Of the remainder of their small 
per cent, eight were not her sons, to-wit: Washington, Jeffer- 
son, Franklin, ]\Ionrob, Hancock, Hamilton, Clinton, Randolph. 
Of her own distinguished men she has remembered in naming 
postoffices, — Adams, Bancroft, Quincy, Cushing, Warren and 
Webster. Why were left unhonored her Paul Revere, Choate, 
Sumner, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whittier, Holmes, Butler, 
Everett, and many more who have shed glory on her name? 



16 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Why not do honor to Bunyan, Baxter, Milton, Cromwell, 
Prynne, Burton, Bostwick and many other Puritans? As she 
has thus honored Winthrop, a colonial Governor, why omit 
Endicott and Cotton Mather? Winthrop sold children into 
slavery only because they could not pay a debt; Endicott 
hanged the Quakers only because they would not change their 
religion, and subscribe to the Puritan Articles of Faith, and 
Mather hanged and burned old women and young girls only 
because some superstitious neurotic accused them of witch- 
craft, and they could not disprove the charge. Why honor 
the Governor who made two little children — boy and girl, 
brother and sister — slaves to work with negroes in the Barba- 
does, and refuse or neglect to place Governor Endicott and 
Mather, her great Scholar and Divine, in the same Hall of 
Fame, one of whom had murdered innocent men for no other 
crime than a difference on doctrines of religion that neither 
understood, and the other had broken the necks of women and 
children on the gallows for failing to prove that they had not 
been working miracles? 

Instead of trying to perpetuate in every laudable way the 
memory of her sons, Massachusetts is blanketed with names of 
no more memorial significance than are the following few 
selected at random: Egypt, Ponkapog, Assinippi, Assonet, 
Quinsigamond, Quineapoxet, Wagnoet, Woods Hole, Wey- 
mouth, Yarmouth, Needham, Eastham, West Chop, and after 
these "mouths" and "hams"' and "chops," she offends one 
of the world's five senses with Buzzard's Bay and Buzzard's 
Bay Postoffice. And, as if she had never heard of Hawthorne, 
Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Choate, Sumner, Everett, and 
others of her great sons, and was unable to find more names 
on the earth, or in the appendix to Webster's Unabridged, she 
doubles, triples and quadruples insignificant names already 
bearing postoffices, by prefixing East, North, South and West 
to about 180 towns, such as East Weymouth, North Weymouth, 
West Yarmouth, South Yarmouth, South Braintree, etc. 

I now tnke the geography of Virginia and West Virginia. 
I inchide the latter because she had received her baptism and 
honorable nomenclature before she was ripped from her mother 
by that barbarian and African process which Henry A. Wise, 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 17 

Virginia's war-Governor, so felicitously characterized by re- 
christening her as "the bastard offspring of political rape." 

Of West Virginia's forty-one counties, thirty-seven were 
named in honor of distinguished persons, and of these all were 
her sons except five. Taking Virginia and West Virginia to- 
gether there are 142 counties, and all of these perpetuate the 
names and glorious deeds of men and one woman — Pocahontas. 

In order to show that this proof of pride of ancestry and of 
lofty sentiment in the South is not confined to Virginia, I 
select one other State — the Benjamin of the Thirteen — rGeor- 
gia. Space does not allow me to exhibit other Southern States, 
notably North and South Carolina. 

Georgia has (1912) 146 counties. In 1905 she had 137. Of 
these 126 bear the names of distinguished men, and nearly all 
were Georgians. The exceptions are equally honorable to the 
State, to-wit: Washington, Jeft'erson, Madison, .Monroe, 
Greene, Burke, Richmond, Calhoun, Decatur, DeKalb, Effing- 
ham, Chatham, Franklin, Hancock, Henry, Jackson, Jasper, 
Milton, Oglethorpe, Pike, Pulaski, Putnam, Taylor, Webster 
and Worth. The counties not named for men attest the patrio- 
tism of the people of Georgia, and also their aestheticism and 
admiration of the beautiful and musical. These exceptions 
are: Columbia, Liberty, Union, and (Indian names) Chatta- 
hoochee, Chiattooga, Cherokee, Coweta, Catoosa, Oconee. 

Since 1905 nine counties have been added and each one 
was created, in part, to bear the name of a distinguished Geor- 
gian. They are: Jenkins (Charles J., who refused, as Gov- 
ernor, to surrender to the bayonet the seal of his State, and 
was deposed by the military) ; Grady (whom even Boston 
has applauded vociferously) ; Toombs (Robert) — the most bril- 
liant, probably, of all Americans) ; Stephens (Alexander H., 
Vice-President of the Confederacy, and known world-wide) ; 
Turner (Henry G., Representative of ability, known to the 
country as one who refused re-election to Congress only be- 
cause he differed with his constituents on the silver issue). 

As the postoffices in Georgia are largely over 2,000 I can- 
not review them in this limited space. The names of her coun- 
ties alone illustrate more clearly than do those of Virginia the 
lofty filial sentiment of the South, her admiration and love for 



18 TRUE VINDICATION 0¥ THE SOUTH 

patriots, statesmen and noble kindred. The casual reader 
must be impressed with the conviction that there is a wide 
gulf between Virginia and Massachusetts, and (ex uno disce 
omnes), the same condition exists in a larger degree between 
the States in the aggregate — North and South. There are 
many who have not measured the magnitude of the gulf be- 
tween them. 

Now, what does the nomenclature adopted by the two colo- 
nies and States indicate? It shows that their peoples are of 
different origin. A philologist would say, after a glance, that 
they differed widely in sentiment, in feeling, in filial devotion 
and pride, and in social culture. What does history say? Vv^hy 
did the sons of Virginia give to her counties such names as 
King and Queen, Prince Frederick, Prince George, Prince Wil- 
liam, Prince Edward, King William, Orange, Elizabeth City, 
Louisa, and others which were of the royalty and the nobility 
of England? Virginia was named in honor of the Virgin 
Queen, Elizabeth. Why did Massachusetts omit all such names, 
and daub and plaster her face with such crude material as I 
have given a few samples of? Was it accidental? Was it a 
vagary that ran through two centuries, from father to son 
during six generations? Those names were not drawn from 
a hat. No ! Those names betray unmistakably the nature of 
the people who established Massachusetts Bay. They were in 
and of one class in England, and the Virginia colonists were 
in and of a different and much higher social class in England. 
The Virginians were not toadies and flunkeys in the gutter, 
reaching up to touch the hems of garments worn by the nobil- 
ity, and giving to their children and homes noble names that 
thrift might follow. Association, social and blood relations 
suggested those names. They were familiar household sounds. 
Some of the nobility came to Virginia. One of them has but 
recently become vested, by descent and failure of issue, with 
the title of Lord Fairfax. Be it said to his credit that he hesi- 
tated and debated whether he would not renounce the title 
and remain a citizen of Virginia. 

In England the ancestors of Virginia's colonists were either 
of the nobility or were of the leisure class that did not labor. 
They followed the hounds and the turf as a gentleman's sport; 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 19 

and as Thackeray portrays in "The Virginians," indulged, men 
and women, in. games of chance. Massachusetts was founded 
by Puritans; Virginia was founded by the Cavaliers. These 
two were of or near the extremes in the social order of England. 
They were not only not in touch socially, but were as far apart 
as the poles in politics, tastes, habits, sentiment, temperament, 
amusements, occupation, and, above all, in religion. The Cava- 
lier clung to the old order of government. The Puritan was not 
only a dissenter, a Nonconformist, but was a leveler, and desired 
to overthrow the government and its religion, roots, trunk and 
branches. Indeed, the position of the two, the Puritans and the 
Cavaliers in England, is well typified by the scene of the Cavalier 
seated in Parliament, while the Puritan, like Guy Fawkes, was 
in the basement burrowing and packing gunpowder to blow up 
the Parliament. One was an organizer for the general good. 
The other was a disorganizer for his special benefit. 

Is it cause for wonder that two peoples with such opposite 
origins should exhibit such contrariety and inequality in senti- 
ment, feeling and action ? The Cavaliers were born and reared 
in affluence near the throne ; the Puritans were born and reared 
in poverty and many were servants to the nobility ; one conform- 
ing to the established order of State and Church ; the other so 
angular and rebellious that they despised both the State 
and the Church, and flouted every doctrine and form of 
religion — Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Episcopal — and 
demanded that their own peculiar religious tenets should be 
accepted by all other religionists as a condition precedent to 
peace and good order in the State. 

The Cavaliers were educated in the colleges and universities 
of England and Continental Europe; the Puritans, with few 
exceptions, that will be named later on, received scant parochial 
education, and passed over the British Channel but once, and 
that was when their rebellious spirit at home aroused the gov- 
ernment to action and a few fled to Holland where they prepared 
for their final exodus across the Atlantic in 1620. 

I beg to say that I am not out on a crusade against the 
Puritans. I do not subscribe to Macaulay's conclusion that the 
Puritans condemned bearbaiting, not because it was cruelty to 
the bear, but because the sport gave pleasure to the spectators. 



20 TRUE VINDICATION OT THE SOUTH 

I am not writing to arouse sectionalism. I desire to allay it. 
Sectionalism was not littered in the South, and, so far as I know, 
taught as I have been by continuous residence in the South, her 
people deplore the cleavage of sectional animus. But when a 
man becomes supercilious, arrogant and abusive, and dons his 
Pharisaical robe, he provokes inquiry into his title to assumed 
superiority. When a man charges his neighbor with dire offenses 
he is open to a challenge to produce his proof. When a man has 
committed crimes against the peace of the State, the welfare of 
all citizens demands an investigation. So, when a quarrel begins 
between two individuals and homicide ensues, and each charges 
the other with being the aggressor, the question for a judge and 
jury to determine is, who was the aggressor? This is necessary 
in order to determine whether the homicide was justifiable. 

If one section of our Union has been arrogant and abusive ; 
has charged another section with offenses against the law; has 
committed crimes against individuals as well as against the laws 
and peace of the State ; has unjustifiably provoked a disastrous 
war, that section should be the one held responsible for all con- 
sequences that followed. It is my purpose to endeavor to show 
who provoked the war between the North and the South, and I 
begin the legal inquiry by an examination into the history of the 
Puritan. I assume as my minor premise that had there been no 
Puritan there could have been no war. This I shall establish 
later by proofs, and my chief witness shall be the Puritan. Had 
there been no Puritan there would have been no Abolitionist, 
for his sire was the Puritan and his dam was the negro. 

And just here a remark is suggested by that scrap of gene- 
alogy. It is that the Republican party of to-day has stolen and 
is masquerading under the name of the party of Jefferson, Madi- 
son and Jackson, and is the offspring — the primogenitor — of that 
child of the Puritan begotten of the negro. The South was 
present when that Party's father was born, and afterward 
witnessed that child's shame at its base parentage, which it tried 
to escape by being christened "Republican." But the change 
of name did not change the infant's spots nor its skin. True to 
its parentage it has all the greed, rapacity, fanaticism and law- 
lessness of its father, and much of the immorality and 'uncon- 
querable, innate proclivity of the mother for appropriating the 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 21 

property of others, that have attained for father and mother and 
child international reputation. In this genealogy can be seen 
one of the insuperable obstacles in the way of the benevolent 
propagandism of Mr. Taft — that is, his desire to absorb the 
South in the Abolition Party. It may be that Faith can remove 
mountains, but there is a high wall that neither Faith nor Mr. 
Taft's blandest "smile" can budge. 

I am not assuming to sit in judgment and to decide which 
of the two peoples I am hastily reviewing is the superior. 
''Whether it is nobler in the mind" to pursue the vocations and 
avocations adopted by the Puritans, or those followed by the 
Cavaliers ; whether it was better to chase the fox with hounds 
and thus save the chickens, or to chase Quakers and hang them 
for dissenting from a creed that they could not, in conscience, 
believe ; whether it was more conducive to morality and happi- 
ness to train horses for the turf and to run them for a wager, 
or to teach from pulpits the duty to God to hunt and run down 
old women and young girls, and hang them on the sole basis of 
a superstition that they could repeat the miracles performed 
under Divine authority by Moses and afflict cattle with murrain 
by looking over a neighbor's fence ; whether it was more humane 
or less fiendish to hang and burn women and children for 
imaginary witchcraft, or to sentence only one woman accused 
of witchcraft to be ducked as ''common scolds" were punished 
in England ages ago, and for the judge to relent and revoke his 
order ; whether it was more cruel and barbarous to steal negroes 
in Africa and chain them between decks and to deprive them 
forever of personal liberty,make them slaves and sell the few who 
did not perish of hunger and thirst while floating in their own 
filth in the middle passage from Africa to New England, or for 
Virginians to buy the surviving slaves — paying for them in full 
— and to treat them with humanity ; whether it was more accept- 
able to God to be worshiped under thirty-nine Articles of Faith, 
which a sinner could believe and be saved, or go his way without 
persecution in this life and take his chance of being damned in 
the next for unbelief, or to worship God under eighty-two 
Articles of Faith, or be damned in this life for refusing to accept 
them, and have his neck broken by a hangman's rope for heresy ; 
whether it was more just and promotive of personal liberty and 



23 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

freedom of conscience to leave each citizen free to attend divine 
worship at his will, or to enact laws that every man, woman and 
child shall go to church a stated number of times each Sabbath, 
or be fined so many shillings, and, on failing to pay, to be sold 
into negro slavery and shipped to the Barbadoes, to collect the 
amount of the fine ; — these and other questions that will arise in 
this discussion are questions of casuistry, of conscience, and of 
such intimate knowledge of the Divine will and pleasure that I 
do not understand and will not assume to decide them. There 
is one fact, however, on which I would have Mr. Taft exercise 
his judicial acumen. It is this, — that the religion of the 
Thirty-nine Articles of Faith is as firmly grounded today as it 
was three hundred years ago, while the intolerant religion of 
the Eighty-two Articles of Faith was long ago exploded and, 
like an exploded meteor in space, is floating in a hundred frag- 
mentary forms — ^headed by Fourierism and Mormonism, and 
ending, for the present only, in Abolitionism, Socialism, Mis- 
cegenation and Eddy-Bakerism. 



CHAPTER V. 

PURITAN NOMENCLATURE.— ( Continued. ) 

Words are things and names are words. I need not tell 
of the latent, dynamic power that abides in a word. It is the 
mightiest instrument for good or evil that God has given to 
man. It can make a hero, or mar a saint. "The pen is mightier 
than the sword" — not the pen, but the word the pen records.. 
Who knew this truism better than the Puritans? 

When the Federal Constitution, by guaranteeing freedom 
of speech and of conscience and by separation of Church and 
State, deprived those fanatics of exercising, at pleasure, their 
brutal practice of banishing and hanging any who dissented 
from their theocratic mummery, they turned at once, with im- 
petuous fury, on their old enemy, the Cavaliers, to wrest from 
them the property sold to them under guaranty of title by the 
Puritans. One of these fanatics under the power of a momen- 
tary flash that bordered on genius, in order to gather a mob 
of followers and to hold them, cried out that "the Constitu- 
tion is a covenant with Death and an agreement with Hell." 
The insanity of the phrase did not in the least impair its vigor 
and energizing power over the ignorant multitude it was 
framed to excite. 

No people, no sect, no fanatics ever sought more diligently 
for verbal weapons to enforce a creed, to damn imaginary here- 
tics, to perpetuate a Faith, or to deceive the public than have 
the Puritans from the age when, as an ethnic "sport," they 
appeared a nondescript and a misfit in English history, down 
to their last, but not their final triumph in chicanery, the devis- 
ing of the schedule on wool and cotton in the Payne-Aldrich- 
Cannon-Taft Tariff bill. 

That they are not always fortunate in the selection of 
names will further appear to the discomfiture of their warm- 
est defenders, when I shall collate a few of the barbarisms 
with which they branded their children at the baptismal font. 



24 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

This will be shown under the head, "Puritan Fanaticism," 
which includes the hagiology of this unparalleled religious 
monstrosity. 

The last two paragraphs, although seemingly digressions, 
have a direct bearing on the Puritan's nomenclature, to which 
I now return. The question is — why is the face of Massa- 
chusetts daubed and warted all over with such meaningless, 
not to say raucous and repellent names? It was not to com- 
pliment the Indians. They were abhorred and despised by the 
Puritans, whose scalps adorned the surrounding wigwams. In 
the war with the Pequots or Pequods, the Indians taken prison- 
ers, against all rules of modern warfare, were shipped to the 
West Indies and B,arbadoes and sold as slaves. Even the wife 
of Philip, King of the Pequods, and their only son, were 
doomed to that inhuman fate. 

By all the rules that commonly influence men in the selec- 
tion of names, we should more reasonably expect to find towns 
in Massachusetts named for some of her negro slaves than for 
her Indian foes. In scanning the map and trying to pronounce 
the names of some of the towns, as so many are Indian, it is 
worthy of note that we do not stumble over "Aponopemquin," 
who, for his piety after the manner of the Puritans, was dub- 
bed by them "Old Jacob." This distinction was conferred be- 
cause Aponopemquin "prayed to God." 

Before giving names to cats and dogs even negroes con 
over a list of names to find one that has some association or 
euphony to commend it. There is but one conclusion to be 
drawn. It is that the Puritans had no thought nor desire to 
honor their ancestors or men distinguished in Church, State, 
literature, science, or art. Whatever possessed or obsessed 
them when things were to be named, they left footprints on 
the sands of New England that will endure as long as her 
granite hills. They selected and domiciled a thousand wit- 
nesses that testify to the Puritans' barrenness of gentility, of 
refined sentiment, of filial devotion, of pride of ancestry — so 
barren that the words of their savage foes, that would balk a 
Russian, are their deliberate choice over the names of their 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 25 

Christian brothers, statesmen and heroic dead. Here are some 
of them: 

NOMENCLATURE. 
Date 

1543 — Gersham Hilles. 

1688 — Manasseh Jeake. 

1802 — Zaphnaphpoaneah Clark. 

1803— Mahershelal-hash-baz Bradford. 

1564 — ^Abdias Pownall. 

Barnabas Pownall. 

Ezekiel 

Posthumus ' ' 

Repentence " 

1589 — Baraleel Nichollson. 

Aholiab Nichollson. 

Rebecca " 

1613 — Jael Mainwaring. 

1617— Ezekyell Culvenvill. 

1582 — Zackary Newton. 

One Edmond Snape, Puritan preacher, promised to bap- 
tize a neighbor's child. He said to the father, "You 
must give it a Christian name allowed in the Scripture." 
The father said his wife wanted the name of her father, 
Richard, given to the child. When the neighbors were 
assembled, and Snape delivered a long harangue and 
asked for the name for baptism, and Richard was given, 
he refused to baptize the child and stood there until 
the crowd dispersed. 

1563 — A Puritan's wife had twins and he had them baptized 
"Cain and Abel." 

Another chose Ramoth-Gilead for his son to wear. 
Mr. Pegden had five sons. They were christened in the 
order born — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the 
fifth was christened Acts-Apostles. 

Lamentations Chapman was sued in Chancery about 
1590. 
Some children were baptized "Dust-and-Ashes." 

1509 — Afl:'ray Manne. 



26 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

1614 — Aphora Merrewether. 

I have said the Puritans were of the lowest social order — • 
and not educated. The reader can not fail to observe 
their ignorance. In choosing names idem sonans was 
their only guide. Evidently they could not read. Take 
the name "Aphrah" in one of Micah's lugubrious 
prophecies — "Declare ye not it at Gath * * * in the 
house of Aphrah roll thyself in the dust." Aphrah 
• means dust. In the Puritans ' baptisms Aphrah is spelled 
Affray, Affera, Afra, Aphora, Aphoric, Aphoro. 
"When the preacher who was christening a child for 
whom the name Achseh (Caleb's daughter) had been 
chosen, asked, "What name?" One woman said 
"Axher." He turned to another, who replied "Axher." 
A third said "Axher." By perseverance, for which 
Puritans and all fanatics and lunatics are distinguished, 
he learned that the name desired was Achseh. The high- 
ways, byways, paths, lanes, alleys, and graveyards 
were strewn for three centuries with Drusillas, Sap- 
phiras, Cecilias, Rebeccas, Deborahs, Sarahs, Susannahs, 
Judiths, Faiths, Hopes, Charities, Priscillas, Dorcases, 
Tabithas, Marthas, Repentances, Hepzibahs, Adahs, 
Tillahs, Methetabels, Jehviadas, Equilas, Eunices, Adnas, 
Dinahs, Tamaras, Daniels, Ezekiels, (spelled six ways, 
, showing the ignorance of the preachers who entered the 
names on the parish registers.) 

Here is a list of Jurors : 
Redeemed Campton. 
Stand-Fast-on-High Stringer. 
Weep-not Billing. 
Called Lower. 
Elected Mitchell. 
Renewed Wisbury. 
Fly-Fornication Richardson, 
Fight-the-Good-Fight-of-Faith White. 
Kill-sin Pemble. 
Preserved Fish. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS. 

Needless is it to tell any American that the Puritans' 
"shadow of a great rock in a weary land," for forty years, was 
Daniel Webster. But when, in 1850, in the trial between the 
North and the South, he turned "State's evidence," the Puri- 
tan's favorite avenger — the mob — hunted him down, drove him 
to ]\larshfield, hemmed him in and there crushed his great heart 
that loved Massachusetts so well as to sacrifice his honor in her 
service. As a complete and final answer to the Puritans' 
attempt to dodge the wrath of Jehovah, scathing the North in 
every region, from Back Bay, Beacon Street, Tremont Street, to 
the reeking slums, I give a quotation from Mr. Webster's address 
December 22, 1820, delivered on Plymouth Rock, entitled "First 
Settlement of New England ' ' : 

"I deem it my duty on this occasion to suggest that the land 
is not yet wholly free from the contamination of a traffic, at 
which every feeling of humanity must forever revolt, — I mean 
the African slave-trade. Neither public sentiment, nor the law, 
has hitherto been able entirely to put an end to this odious and 
abominable trade. At the moment when God in His mercy has 
blessed the Christian world with a universal peace, there is 
reason to fear that, to the disgrace of the Christian name and 
character, new efforts are making for the extension of this trade 
by subjects and citizens of Christian States, in whose hearts 
there dwell no sentiments of humanity or of justice, and over 
whom neither the fear of God nor the fear of man exercises a 
control. In the sight of our law the African slave-trader is a 
pirate and a felon ; and in the sight of Heaven, an offender far 
beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. There is no brighter 
page of our history, than that which records the measures which 
have been adopted by the government at an early day, and at 
different times since, for the suppression of this traffic ; and I 
would call on all the true sons of New England to co-operate 
with the laws of man, and the justice of Heaven. If there be, 



28 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

within the extent of our knowledge or influence, any participa- 
tion in this traffic, let us pledge ourselves here, upon the rock of 
Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land 
of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound 
of the hammer, I see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles 
and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages 
of those who by stealth and at midnight labor in this work of 
hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instru- 
ments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let 
it cease to be of New England." 

Let it not be overlooked that he was speaking in the present 
tense — of conditions in December, 1820 — thirty years after the 
Puritans began to petition Congress to abolish slavery, and 
thirty-three years after the Puritan deputies in the Convention 
that framed the Constitution affected such sensitiveness of con- 
science as to wrangle over the horrors of slavery until they got 
a valuable concession for consenting to the fugitive slave clause, 
and to the continuance of the slave-trade until A. D. 1808. Note 
this language : 

''It is not fit that the land of the Pilgrims should bear this 
shame longer, I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke 
of the furnace where manacles and fetters are still forged for 
human, limbs, I see the visages of those who, by stealth, and at 
midnight, labor in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may 
become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. 
Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England!" 

And this appeal by New England's greatest Prophet and 
Priest ! 

Let us hear another witness on slavery during 150 years, in 
the first colony of the New England group — the bellwether of 
the flock ; the one whose filio-pietistic historians — in the vain 
struggle to bury out of sight her mountainous avarice, hypocrisy, 
perfidy to prisoners, fanaticism worse than insanity, cruelty to 
all races, white, black and brown — have written more books and 
pamphlets, preached more sermons, delivered more maudlin 
post-prandial speeches and set orations, and spun more sailors' 
yarns than Scheherazade invented through a thousand and one 
dismal days, to spin during as many nights to save her life. 
This witness is George II. Moore, Librarian of the New York 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 29 

Historical Society and corresponding member of the Mass- 
achusetts Historical Society. His book is entitled "NOTES ON 
THE HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS." This 
book appeared in 1866, one year after Massachusetts had ceased 
from her bloody work of four years to free the negroes she had 
enslaved and sold to the South. Mr. Moore 's book is not written 
as a history. It is a careful compilation of extracts from his- 
tories, legislation, journals, judgments of courts, statutes, execu- 
tive documents, etc., some of which "import absolute verity," 
and all are free from the suspicion of bias. The reader will 
note that the various extracts contain proof of the above charges 
of fanaticism, avarice, hypocrisy, perfidy, treachery, and cruelty. 
The lame and impotent effort of the statesmen in Massa- 
chusetts, during a century, to legislate slavery out of the colony, 
forms the most ludicrous chapter in all the solemn farces in the 
history of hypocrisy, and of man's success in illustrating "how 
not to do it." In fact, the entire history of negro slavery in 
that nursery of "moral ideas" is, in the moral and intellectual 
realms, as fantastical, spasmodic and neurotic as is her record 
made by her religious fanatics. The two are like the two nega- 
tive poles of electricity — they never come together. There was 
a constant battle-royal between Avarice and a weak antagonist 
wearing the masque of Conscience — with Avarice always in the 
ascendant. The forces arrayed under the banner of Conscience, 
while holding the vantage ground in every conflict, were too 
weak to dislodge the foe. In every assault. Conscience, like 
the great New York statesman, "Me Too," always fell outside 
the breastworks. This unequal struggle was waged during a 
hundred and fifty years. And, Mr. Moore says, the indisputable 
record shows that Conscience never succeeded in vanquishing 
its stubborn foe; not until the Southern States went to its 
assistance in 1866, by voting to adopt the 13th Amendment to 
the Constitution. The advantage Avarice held to the last was 
that it occupied the citadel with headquarters in palaces along 
Beacon Street, Tremont and Commonwealth, faring sumptuously 
on pumpkin pie, Boston beans, champagne and the rarest 
Havanas, while Conscience had to camp outside, having no 
bounties to buy recruits, in the valley of dry bones of the mur- 
dered Quakers, women and children, their own innocent victims, 



30 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

mingled with the skeletons of a hundred thousand negro slaves 
contributed to the heap by her enemy — Avarice. 

Now to the law and testimony as furnished by that impar- 
tial ''chronicler of the times," George H. Moore. His opening 
sentence is in these words: "We find the earliest records of 
the history of slavery in Massachusetts at the period of the 
Pequod War — a few years after the Puritan settlement of the 
colony.' Prior to that time an occasional offender against the 
laws was punished by being sold into slavery or adjudged lo 
servitude ; but the institution first appears clearly and distinctly 
in the enslaving of Indians captured in war." That it may 
appear beyond question that Mr. George H. Moore had no pro- 
slavery proclivities, I quote the closing sentence in the para- 
graph just quoted from: "And at the outset we desire to say 
that in this history there is nothing to comfort pro-slavery men 
anywhere. The stains which slavery has left on the proud 
escutcheon even of Massachusetts, are quite as significant of its 
hideous character as the satanic defiance of God and Humanity 
which accompanied the laying of the corner-stone of the Slave- 
holders ' Confederacy. ' * 

Page 4. He says: "At any rate, it is certain that in the 
Pequod War they took many prisoners. Some of these, who 
had been disposed of to particular persons in the country, ran 
away, and being brought in again, were branded on the shoulder. 
In July, 1637, Winthrop says, 'We had now slain and taken, in 
all, about seven hundred. We sent fifteen of the boys and two 
women to Bermuda, by Mr. Pierce; but he, missing it, carried 
them to Providence Isle. The prisoners were divided, some 
to those of the Connecticut Colony and the rest to us. Of these 
we sent the male children to Bermuda, by Mr. William Pierce, 
and the women and maid children are disposed aboute in the 
tonnes.' " 

Hubbard, a contemporary historian of the Indian Wars, con- 
firms that statement of Gov. Winthrop. 

Winthrop, in his Journal of Feb. 26th, 1638, says: "Mr. 
Pieroe. in the Salem ship, the Desire, returned from the West 
Indies after seven months. He had been at Providence, and 
bought some cotton, and tobacco, and negroes, etc., from thence, 
and salt from Tertugos." Long afterwards Dr. Belknap said 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 31 

of the slave-trade, that the rum distilled in Massachusetts was 
''the mainspring of this traffick." Josselyn says that "they 
sent the male children of the Pequots to the Bermudas. ' ' 

This single cargo of women and children was probably not 
the only one sent, for the Company of Providence Island, in 
replying from London in 1638, July 3rd, to letters from the 
authorities in the island, direct special care to be taken of the 
"Cannibal negroes brought from New England." And in 1639, 
when the Company feared that the number of the negroes might 
become too great to be managed, the authorities thought they 
might be sold and sent to New England or Virginia. The ship 
"Desire" was a vessel of one hundred and twenty tons, built 
at Marblehead in 1636, one of the earliest built in the Colony. 
Josselyn visited New England twice, and spent about ten years 
in this country . In speaking of the people of Boston he mentions 
that the people * ' are well accommodated with servants * * * 
of these some are English, others negroes. ' ' 

It will be observed that this first entrance into the slave- 
trade was not a private, individual speculation. It was the 
enterprise of the authorities of the Colony. And on the 13th 
of March, 1639, it was ordered by the General Court "that 318s 
should be paid Leiftenant Davenport for the present, for charge 
disbursed for the slaves, which, when they have earned it, hee 
is to repay it back againe." The marginal note is, "Lieft. 
Davenport to keep the slaves." 

The first statute established on slavery in America is to be 
found in the famous CODE OF FUNDAMENTALS, or BODY 
OF LIBERTIES OF THE MASSACHUSETTS COLONY IN 
NEW ENGLAND— the first code of laws of that colony, adopted 
in December, 1641. These liberties had been, after a long 
struggle between the magistrates and the people, extracted from 
the reluctant grasp of the former, "The people had (1639) 
long desired a body of laws, and thought their condition very 
unsafe, while so much power rested in the discretion of magis- 
trates." (Winthrop, I, 322.) Never were the demands of a 
free people eluded by their public servants with more of the 
concortions as well as wisdom of the serpent. But to the law 



32 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

and the testimony. The ninety-first article of the Body of 
Liberties appears as follows, under the head of 

"LIBERTIES OF FORREINERS AND STRANGERS: 

"91. There shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage or 
eaptivitie amongst us unless it be lawfuU captives taken in just 
warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are 
sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian 
usages which the law of God established in Israeli concerning 
such persons doeth morally require. This exempts none from 
servitude who shall be Judged thereto by Authoritie. ' ' 

In the second printed edition, that of 1660, the law appears 
as follows, under the title "BOND SLAVERY." 

"It is Ordered by this Court & Authority thereof; that there 
shall never be any bond-slavery, villenage or captivity amongst 
us, unless it be Lawfull captives, taken in just warrs, or such 
as shall willingly sell themselves, or are sold to us, and such 
shall have the liberties, & Christian usages which the Law of 
God established in Israel, Concerning such persons, doth morally 
require, provided this exempts none from servitude, who shall 
be judged thereto by authority. ' ' A copy of this law is now pre- 
served in the Library of the American Antiquarian Society at 
"Worcester, in Massachusetts. 

Thus stood the statute through the whole colonial period, 
and it was never expressly repealed. Based on the Mosaic code, 
it is an absolute recognition of slavery as a legitimate status, 
and of the right of one man to sell himself as well as that of 
another man to buy him. It sanctions the slave-trade, and the 
perpetual bondage of Indians and negroes, their children and 
their children's children, and entitled Massachusetts to pre- 
cedence over any and all the other colonies in similar legislation. 
It anticipated by many years anything of the sort to be found 
in the statutes of Virginia, or Maryland, or South Carolina, and 
nothing like it is to be found in the contemporary codes of her 
sister colonies in New England. Yet this very law has been 
gravely cited in a paper communicated to the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, and twice reprinted in its publication without 
challenge or correction, as an evidence that "so far as it felt 
free to follow its own inclinations, uncontrolled by the action 
of the mother country, Massachusetts was hostile to slavery as 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 33 

an institution." And with the statute before them, it has been 
persistently asserted and repeated by all sorts of authorities, 
historical and legal, up to that of the Chief Justice of the 
Supreme Court of the Commonwealth, that "slavery to a 
certain extent seems to have crept in; not probably by force 
of any law, for none such is found or known to exist. ' ' 

For over a hundred years negroes were sold in Massachusetts 
as slaves and their children were born in slavery during at 
least four generations, and one negro, Edom London, had been 
recognized as a slave to the extent of being sold and bought by 
eleven masters. Chief Justice Parsons in making the decision, 
said that the general practice and common usage had been 
opposed to this opinion, but sustained the opinion that a negro 
born in the State before the Constitution of 1780 was born free, 
although born of a female slave. Chief Justice Parker, in 1816, 
cautiously confirmed this view of the subject by his predecessor. 
He said, ' ' The practice was * * * to consider such issue as 
slaves, and the property of tlie master oP the parer.ts, lia'-ie to 
be sold and transferred like other chattels, and as assets in the 
hands of executors and administrators." He adds, "We think 
there is no doubt that, at any period of our history, the issue of 
a slave husband and a free wife would have been declared free." 
"His children, if the issue of a marriage with a slave, would, 
immediately on their birth, become the property of his master, 
or of the master of the female slave." 

Notwithstanding all this, in Mr. Sumner's famous speech in 
the Senate, June 28th, 1854, he boldly asserted that "in all her 
annals, no person was ever born a slave on the soil of Massa- 
chusetts," and "if, in point of fact, the issue of slaves was some- 
times held in bondage, it was never sanctioned by any statute- 
law of Colony or Commonwealth." 

The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of 
New England, 19th jMay, 1643, which commence with the 
famous recital of their object in coming into those parts of 
America, viz., "to advance the Kingdome of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospell in puritie -with 
peace," practically recognize the lawful existence of slavery. 
The fourth Article, which provides for the due adjustment of 



34 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

the expense or "charge of all just warrs whether offensive or 
defensive," concludes as follows: 

' ' And that according to their different charge of each juris- 
diccon and plantacon, the whole advantage of the warr (if it 
please God to bless their Endeavours) whether it be in lands, 
goods, or persons, shall be proportionably devided among the 
said Confederates." The original of the Fugitive Slave Law 
provision in the Federal Constitution is to be traced to this 
Confederacy, in which Massachusetts was the ruling colony. 

Mr. Moore says: "Historians have generally supposed that 
the transactions in 1644-5, in which Thomas Keyfer and one 
James Smith, the latter a member of the church of Boston, 
were implicated, first brought upon the colonies the guilt of 
participating in the traffic of African slaves. The account 
which we have given of the voyage of the first colonial slave- 
ship, the Desire, shows this to have been an error, and that 
which we shall give to these transactions will expose another 
of quite as much importance." Mr. Moore then quotes from 
the historian Hildreth in his story of New England theocracy, 
and says : 

' ' The first code of laws in Massachusetts established slavery, 
as we have shown, and at the very birth of the foreign com- 
merce of New England the African slave-trade became a regu- 
lar business. The ships which took cargoes of slaves and fish 
to Madeira and the Canaries were accustomed to touch on the 
coast of Guinea to trade for negroes, who were carried gener- 
ally to Barbadoes, or the other English Islands in the West 
Indies, tlie demand for them at home being small. In fact. 
Gov. Winthrop in his Journal made this entry: 'One of our 
ships, which went to the Canaries with pipe-staves in the be- 
ginning of November last, returned now (1645) and brought 
wine, and sugar, and salt, and some tobacco, which she had 
at Barbadoes, in exchange for Africoes, which she carried 
from the Isle of Maio.' " 

In 1646, the Commissioners of the United Colonies made a 
very remarkable order, practically authorizing, upon complaint 
of trespass by the Indians, the seizure of "any of that planta^ 
tion of Indians that shall entertain, protect, or rescue the of- 
fender," The order further proceeds: "And, because it will 
be chargeable keeping Indians in prisone, and if they should 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 35 

escape, they are like to prove more insolent and dangerous 
after, that upon such seazure, the delinquent or satisfaction 
be againe demanded, of the Sagamore or plantation of Indians 
guilty or accessory as before, and if it be denyed, that then, 
the magistrates of the Jurisdiccon deliver up the Indians leased 
to the party or parties indamaged, either to serve, or to be 
shipped out and exchanged for Negroes as the cause will justly 
beare. " 

Two things must be noted here, viz., the export for trade 
of Indians for negroes, and the measure of ''justice" in those 
days between the colonists and the natives. Mr. Moore also 
notes the treatment of the two children, Daniel and Provided 
Southwick, son and daughter to Lawrence Southwick, who on 
June 29th, 1658, were fined 10£, but their fines not being paid, 
and the parties (as is stated in the proceedings) "pretending 
they have no estates, resolving not to worke and others like- 
wise have been fyned and more like to be fyned" — the Gen- 
eral Court were called upon in the following year, May 11th, 
1659, to decide what course should be taken for the satisfac- 
tion of the fines. This they did, after due deliberation, by a 
resolution empowering the County Treasurers to sell the said 
persons to any of the English nation at Virginia or Barbadoes — 
in accordance with their law for the sale of poor and delin- 
quent debtors. To accomplish this they wrested their own law 
from its just application, for the special law concerning fines 
did not permit them to go beyond imprisonment for non-pay- 
ment. 

The father and mother of these children, who had before 
suffered in their estate and persons, were at the same time 
banished on pain of death, and took refuge in Shelter Island, 
where they shortly afterward died. The Treasurer, on at- 
tempting to find passage for the children to Barbadoes, in 
execution of the order of sale, found "none willing to take 
or carry them." Thus the entire design failed, only through 
the reluctance of these shipmasters to aid in its consummation. 
Provided Southwick was subsequent!}', in the same year, in 
company with several other Quaker ladies, "whipt with tenn 
stripes," and afterwards "committed to prison to be proceeded 
with as the law directs." 



CHAPTER VII. 

SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS. 

( Continued. ) 

In August, 1675, the Council at Plymouth ordered the sale 
of a company of Indians, "being men, women and children, 
in number 112. The Treasurer made the sale "in the coun- 
tryes behalf e." (Plymouth Records, v. 173.) 

A short time after the Council made a similar dispo- 
sition of 57 more Indians who had come in and surrendered. 
These were condemned to perpetual servitude, and the Treas- 
urer was ordered to make sale of them, "to and for the use 
of the collonie. " 

One item Mr. Moore gives is that the Colony of Massa- 
chussets for 188 Indians, prisoners of war, received 397£. 
(Plymouth Records, x., 401.) 

Mr. Moore says — "There is a peculiar significance in the 
phrase which occurs in the Records — sent away by the Treas- 
urer. It means sold into slavery.'' (Mass. Records, v. 58.) 
He says: "The statistics of the traffic carried on by the 
Colony Treasurer cannot be ascertained from any sources now 
at command. But great numbers of Phillip's people were sold 
as slaves in foreign countries. In the beginning of the war 
Captain Moseley captured 80, who were confined at Plymouth. 
In September following 178 were put on board a vessel com- 
manded by Captain Sprague, who sailed from Plymouth with 
them for Spain. 

"The Apostle Eliot's earnest remonstrance is a glorious 
memoi'ial of his fearless devotion to reason and humanity — 
to which neither the rulers nor the people of Massachusetts 
were then inclined to listen. He appeared to the Governor and 
Council, and, among other things, said: 'Christ hath said, 
blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. This 
usage of them is worse than death. * * * j^ seemeth to me, 
that to sell them away for slaves is to hinder the inlargement 
of Christ's kingdom. * * * To sell souls for money seemeth 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 37 

to me a dangerous merchandise. If they deserve to die, it is 
far better to be put to death under godly governors, who will 
take religious care that means may be used that they may die 
penitently.' * * * (Deut. 23: 15-16. Plymouth Colony 
Records.) 

"There is nothing to show that the Council gave heed to 
the petition of Eliot, but it has been disclosed that the General 
Court the same day shipped several Indians away. The Gen- 
eral Court, 1678, passed an order prohibiting everybody in the 
Colony, or elsewhere, 'to buy any of the Indian children of any 
of those captive salvages, without special leave, liking and 
approbation of the government of this jurisdiction.' " 

It were well if the record were no worse; but to all this 
is to be added the baseness of treachery and falsehood. Many 
of these prisoners surrendered, and still greater numbers came 
in voluntarily to submit, upon the promise that they and their 
wives and children should have their lives spared, and none 
of them be transported out of the country. In one instance, 
narrated by the famous Captain Church himself, no less than 
"eight score persons" were "without any regard to the 
promises made them on their surrendering themselves, carried 
away to Plymouth, there sold and transported out of the coun- 
try." (Church, 23, 24, 41, 51, 57. Baylies, in his Memoir of 
Plymouth Colony, Part III., pp. 47, 48, gives some additonal 
particulars of this affair. 

I give here another quotation from Mr. Moore to illustrate 
the Puritan's conscience. "After the destruction of Dart- 
mouth, the Plymouth forces (soldiers) were ordered there, and 
as the Dartmouth Indians had not been concerned in this out- 
rage, a negotiation was commenced w^ith them. By the persua- 
sion of Ralph Earl, and the promise of Captain Eels, who com- 
manded the Plymouth forces, the}' were induced to surrender 
themselves as prisoners, and were conducted to Plymouth. 
Notwithstanding the promises by which they had been allured 
to submit, notwithstanding the earnest, vehement, and indig- 
nant remonstrances of Eels, Church and Earl, the government, 
to their eternal infamy, ordered the whole to be sold as slaves, 
and they were transported out of the country, being about 160 
in number. So indignant was Church at the commission of 



88 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

this vile act, that the government never forgave the warmth 
and the bitterness of his expressions, and the resentment that 
was then engendered induced them to withdraw all command 
from this brave, skillful, honest, open-hearted and generous 
man, until the fear of utter destruction compelled them, sub- 
sequently, to entrust him with a high command. This mean 
and treacherous conduct alienated all the Indians who were 
doubtful, and even those who were strongly predisposed to 
join the English." 

Easton, in his Kelation, p. 21, says: ''Philip being flead; 
about a 150 Indians came in to a Plimouth Garrison volentarly. 
Plymouth authority sould all for Slafes (but about six of them) 
to be carried out of the country." 

Plymouth Colony gave Church authority to receive certain 
fugitives (whether men, women, or children) from the authori- 
ties of the Rhode Island government, 1676, He was "im- 
powered to sell and dispose of such of them, and so many as 
he shall see cause for, there: to the Inhabitants or others, for 
Term of Life, or for shorter time, as there may be reasons. 
And his acting, herein, shall at all times be owned and justified 
by the said CoUony." 

Nor did the Christian Indians or Praying Indians escape 
the relentless hostility and cupidity of the whites. Besides 
other cruelties, instances are not wanting in which some of these 
were sold as slaves, and under accusations which turned out to 
be utterly false and without foundation. (Gookin's Hist, of the 
Christian Indians.) 

President Mather (President of the High Court) in relating 
the battle in August, 1676, the last one of the war, says : "Philip 
hardly escaped with his life also. He had fled and left his 
peage behind him, also his squaw and son were taken captive, 
and are now prisoners at Plymouth. Thus hath God brought 
this grand enemy into great misery before he quite destroy him. 
It must needs be bitter as death to him to lose his wife and only 
son (for the Indians are marvellous fond and affectionate tow- 
ards their children) besides other relations, and almost all his 
subjects, and country also." 

Edw. Everett, in his address at Bloody Brook, 1835, among 
other things said : "And what was the fate of Philip's wife and 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 39 

son? This is a tale for husbands and wives, for parents and 
children. Young men and women, you can not understand. 
What was the fate of Philip's wife and child? She is a woman, 
he is a lad. They did not surely hang them. No, that would 
have been mercy. The boy is the grandson, his mother the 
daughter-in-law of good old Massasoit, the first and best friend 
the English ever had in New England. Perhaps — perhaps, now 
Philip is slain, and his warriors scattered to the four winds, they 
will allow his wife and son to go back — the widow and the 
orphan — to finish their days and sorrows in their native wilder- 
ness. They are sold into slavery. West Indian slavery; an 
Indian princess and her child, sold from the cool breezes of 
Mount Hope, from the wild freedom of a New England forest, 
to gasp under the lash, beneath the blazing sun of the tropics ! 
Bitter as death; aye, bitter as hell! Is there anything, — I do 
not say in the range of humanity — is there anything animated, 
that would not struggle against this ? ' ' 

"Ah ! happier they, who in the strife 

For freedom fell, than, o 'er the main. 
Those who in galling slavery's chain 

Still bore the load of hated life, — 

Bowed to base tasks their generous pride, 
And scourged and broken-hearted, died ! ' ' 

Several curious investigators, among them Ebenezer Hazard, 
of Philadelphia, who died 1817, tried to ascertain the fate of the 
boy, the son of Philip. Documents were discovered by Nahum 
Mitchell that showed that the most devoted followers of Christ 
among the Puritans discussed the question as to whether the 
boy was to be put to death, and the matter was referred to that 
celebrated and learned Puritan divine, John Cotton, and Rev. 
Mr. Arnold, of Marshfield. (We wonder if this were afterward 
the seat of New England's great prophet, priest and expounder 
of the Constitution, Daniel Webster.) 

Among other things in a very curious discussion of the 
question by these learned divines, Sept. 7th, 1670, they say : 
"Our answer is that we do acknowledge that rule, Deut. 24:16, 
to be moral, and therefore perpetually binding, viz., that in a 
particular act of wickedness, though capital, the crime of the 
parent doth not render his child a, subject to punishment by the 



40 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

civil magistrate ; yet, upon serious consideration, we humbly 
conceive that the children of notorious traitors, rebels, and 
murtherers, especially of such as have bin principal leaders and 
actors in such horrid villanies, and that against a whole nation, 
yea the whole Israel of God, may be involved in the guilt of 
their parents, and may, salva republica," (Latin almost as bad 
as the logic) ''be adjudged to death, as to us seems evident by 
the scripture instances of Saul, Achan, Haman, the children of 
whom were cut off, by the sword of Justice for the transgression 
of their parents, although concerning some of those children, it 
may be manifest, that they were not capable of being co-acters 
therein. Signed: Samuel Arnold, John Cotton." 

The Rev. Increase Mather, nephew of Cotton Mather, of 
Boston, also took a hand in the discussion, six years after, that 
is in 1676. "It is necessary that some effectual course should 
be taken about him (Philip's son). He makes me think of Hadad, 
who was a little child when his father (the Chief Sachem of 
the Edomites) was killed by Joab ; and, had not others fled 
aAvay with him, I am apt to think, that David would have taken 
a course, that Hadad should never have proved a scourge to the 
next generation." That is, he was apt to think that David 
would have gently removed him from this world to the next. 

In 1675, Major Waldron, a Commissioner, and Magistrate 
for a portion of Massachusetts territory, issued general war- 
rants for seizing every Indian known to be manslayer, traitor 
or conspirator. Under this unlimited order ship masters began 
to kidnap every Indian along the coast. One vessel lurked along 
the shores of Pemaquid kidnaping the natives, carried them to 
foreign parts and sold them as slaves. Similar outrages were 
committed farther east, as far doAvn as Cape Sable, "who never 
had been in the least manner guilty of any injury done to the 
English. ' ' For this kidnaping and slave trade there is no record 
that the offenders were punished. 

After the death of King Philip, 400 more of his warriors, who 
were at perfect peace with the colonies, were arrested, sent to 
Boston, seven or eight of them, who were known to have killed 
Englishmen, were condemned and hanged; the rest were sold 
into slavery in foreign parts. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 41 

I will. now give some extracts from Mr. Moore's work on the 
evidence of the existence of the commencement and continuance 
of slavery in Massachusetts. It has already been shown that in 
sixteen years after the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth 
Rock they built their first ship and christened it "The Desire," 
which started out at once to the coast of Africa, and returned 
with a cargo of slaves two years later; that, so far as I have 
been able to ascertain, was the beginning of the slave trade by 
the Puritans who had fled from England to enjoy personal 
liberty and freedom of conscience. 

We will skip now to the 18th century, slavery having con- 
tinued from that date, 1638, so far as Mr. Moore could discover, 
until the first positive action forbidding it, the 13th Amend- 
ment to the Constitution of the United States, in 1866. I give 
here a few disconnected extracts as valuable nuggets. 

Judge Sewall referred to the "numerousness" of the slaves 
in Massachusetts in 1700. Gov. Dudley's report to the Board of 
Trade, in 1708, gave 400 as then in Boston, one-half of whom 
were born there. This fact I mention because some very indis- 
creet descendants of these Puritan Fathers have maintained 
that children born in slavery in Massachusetts were free. In 
1735 there were 2,600 negroes in Massachusetts. In 1742 there 
were 1,514 in Boston alone, Mr. Moore says that it is a curious 
fact that the first census in Massachusetts was a census of negro 
slaves. In 1754 there were 4,489 ; in 1764 there were 5,779 ; in 
1790 (by the United States census) 6,001. 

In 1700 Massachusetts thought it advisable to legislate 
against some of her citizens to prevent peonage of Indians. The 
law of 1700 was enacted to protect the Indians against the exac- 
tions and oppressions which some of the English exercised 
towards them ' ' by drawing them to consent to covenant or bind 
themselves or children apprentices or servants for an unreason- 
able term, on pretense of or to make satisfaction for some small 
debt contracted or damage done by them." In 1725 a law was 
enacted to prevent those citzens from kidnaping Indians. In 
1703 a law was passed against the "manumission, discharge, or 
setting free" of mulatto or negro slaves. Security was required 
against the contingency of these persons becoming a charge to 
the town, and none were to be accounted free for whom security 



42 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

was not given ; but were to be the proper charge of their respec- 
tive masters or mistresses, "in case they stand in need of relief 
and support, notwithstanding any manumission or instrument 
of freedom to them made or given. ' ' The Puritans had been in 
the habit of freeing their aged and infirm slaves to relieve them- 
selves of their support. To prevent this practice, the act was 
passed. This act was still in force as late as June, 1807, when 
it was reproduced in the revised laws and continued until a much 
later period. 

In 1703 a law was passed prohibiting Indians, Negroes or 
Mulatto servants or slaves to be abroad after 9 o 'clock at night. 
In 1705 a law was passed "for the better prevention of a 
Spurious and Mixt Issue, etc." It also punishes any Negro 
or Mulatto for "stricking a Christian," by whipping at the 
discretion of the Justices before whom he may be convicted. It 
also prohibits marriages of Christians with Negroes or Mulat- 
toes — and imposes a penaltj'- of £50 upon the persons joining 
them in marriage. The citizens of Massachusetts seemed to have 
reconsidered the justice of this law prohibiting negroes and 
whites to marry, as such marriages were practiced almost daily 
near the outborders. It seems that they had advanced to that 
stage of civilization where they left that question to be settled 
by the moral sense of the parties who proposed to be joined in 
wedlock ; just as recently some members of the Methodist 
Church, North, in Convention in Minnesota, moved to repeal the 
church ordinance that forbids dancing, attending theaters, etc., 
and to leave it to the moral sense of the members of the church. 

In Pennsylvania, where there were quite a number of 
negroes, it seems that William Penn proposed to his Council 
that they do some legislating about the negroes, and a bill was 
introduced in both Houses "for regulating Negroes in their 
Morals and Marriages, etc.," which was twice read and rejected, 
or, as they would have said in the Massachusetts General Court, 
the bill "subsided." To one but slightly acquainted with the 
morals of negroes it seems to have been a brave undertaking on 
the part of the Pennsylvania law makers to regulate the morals 
of negroes. 

It has been said times without number that at the North 
during the existence of slavery there, mothers and children 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 43 

were never parted. Mr. Moore says, page 57 : " The breeding 
of slaves was not regarded with favor. The owner of a valuable 
female slave was to consider what all the risks of health and life 
were to be, and whether the increase of stock would reimburse 
the loss of service." Dr. Belknap says that "negro children 
were considered an incumbrance in a family ; and when weaned, 
were given away like puppies." (Mass. Historical Society'' Coll., 
1, IV, 200.) They were frequently publicly advertised "to be 
given away. ' ' 

In 1786 the legislature of the State of Massachusetts passed 
an "Act for the orderly Solemnization of Marriage," by the 
seventh section whereof it was enacted "that no person author- 
ized by this act to marry shall join in marriage any white person 
with any Negro, Indian or Mulatto, under penalty of 50 £ ; and 
all such marriages shall be absolutely null and void." The pro- 
hibition continued until 1843, when it was repealed by a special 
"act relating to marriage between individuals of certain races." 
It thus appears that Massachusetts, over twenty years before 
negroes were freed, threw wide open the doors of her churches, 
of her courts and magistrates, to negroes and whites to be 
joined in the holy bonds of matrimony. 

In 1727 — Mr. Drake says — "the traffic in slaves appears to 
have been more of an object in Boston than at any other period 
before or since. ' ' In the following year an act was passed more 
effectually to secure the duty on the importation of negroes, and 
more stringent regulations were made to prevent smuggling of 
slaves in the province to avoid paying the duty, and the draw- 
back was allowed on all negroes dying within twelve months. 
Another act prohibited negro slaves to entertain any servants 
of their own color in their houses, without permission of the 
respective masters or mistresses. 

In 1718 all Indian, Negro, and Mulatto servants for life were 
estimated as other Personal Estate — ^viz., Each male servant for 
life above fourteen years of age, at 15£ value ; each female 
servant for life, above fourteen years of age, at 10 ^ value. Mr. 
Moore adds (page 65) : "And thus they continued to be rated 
with horses, oxen, cows, sheep and swine, until after the com- 
mencement of the "War of the Revolution." On the same page, 
Mr. Moore says "the Guinea Trade, as it was called then, since 



44 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

known and branded by all civilized nations as piracy, whose 
beginnings we have noticed, continued to flourish under the 
auspices of Massachusetts merchants down through the entire 
colonial period, and long after the boasted Declaration of Rights 
in 1780 had terminated ( ?) the legal existence of slavery within 
the limits of that State." He then gives a copy of the letter of 
instructions dated Nov. 12th, 1785, to a Captain of a brig by 
the owners, who were about to send the Captain to the coast of 
Africa for a cargo of Negro slaves. 



CHAPTER Vin. 

SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS. 

(Continued) 

Before the war of 1861 the press of the North was full of 
caricatures of the sale of negroes in the South on the block ; 
they would describe how the auctioneer would tell the negro 
to open his mouth to see if his teeth were sound, show his limbs, 
turn him around and display his good qualities. I make a short 
quotation from the instructions given by the owners of the 
Captain of the brig mentioned in the preceding chapter : ' ' Our 
orders are, that you embrace the first fair wind and make the 
best of your way to the coast of Africa, and there invest your 
cargo in slaves. As slaves, like other articles, when brought to 
market generally appear to the best advantage ; therefore, too 
critical ail inspection can not be paid to them before purchase ; 
to see that no dangerous distemper is lurking about them, to 
attend particularly to their age, to their countenance, to the 
straightness of their limbs, and, as far as possible to the good- 
ness or badness of their constitution, etc., etc., will be very 
considerable objects." 

The slaves purchased in Africa were chiefly sold in the 
"West Indies, or the Southern colonies; but when these mar- 
kets were glutted, and the price low, some of them were 
brought to Massachusetts. In 1795 Dr. Belknap could remember 
two or three entire cargoes, and the Doctor himself remembered 
some, between 1755 and 1765, which consisted almost wholly 
of children. Sometimes the vessels of the neighboring colony of 
Khode Island, after having sold their prime slaves in the West 
Indies, brought the remnants of their cargoes to Boston for sale. 

Page 69. It has been asserted that in Massachusetts, not 
only were the miseries of slavery mitigated, but some of its worst 
features were wholly unknown. But the record does not bear out 
the suggestion ; and the traditions of one town at least preserved 
the memory of the most brutal and barbarous of all, "raising 
slaves for the market. ' ' 



46 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Page 70. Mr. Moore gives an advertisement bearing on the 
subject of non-separation of mother and child. "For Sale, a 
likely negro woman about 19 years and a child of about 6 months 
of age to be sold together or apart." 

Mr. Moore quotes on page 71 from Froude's History of Eng- 
land, Volume VIII., page 480 : ''It would be to misread history 
and to forget the change of times, to see in the fathers of New 
England mere commonplace slavemongers ; to themselves they 
appeared as the elect to whom God had given the heathen for an 
inheritance ; they were men of stern intellect and fanatical faith, 
who, believing themselves the favorites of Providence, imitated 
the example and assumed the privileges of the chosen people, 
and for their wildest and worst acts they could claim the sanc- 
tion of religious conviction. In seizing and enslaving Indians, 
and trading for Negroes, they were but entering into possession 
of the heritage of the saints ; and New England had to outgrow 
the theology of the Elizabethan Calvinists before it could under- 
stand that the Father of Heaven respected neither person nor 
color, and that His arbitrary favor — if more than a dream of 
divines— was confined to spiritual privileges." 

No servant, either man or maid, was permitted "to give, sell 
or truck any commodity whatsoever without license from their 
masters, during the time of their service, under pain of fine, 
or corporal punishment, at the discretion of the Court, as the 
offence shall deserve." 

Page 105. Mr, Moore says : "The Puritans appear to have 
been neither shocked nor perplexed with the institution, for 
which they made ample provision in their earliest code. They 
were familiar with the Greek and Roman ideas on the subject, 
and added the conviction that slavery was established by the 
law of God, and that Christianity always recognized it as the 
antecedent Mosaic practice. On these foundations, is it strange 
that it held its place so long in the history of Massachusetts?" 

In 1767, James Otis, perhaps the greatest of all the sons 
of Massachusetts ("Webster being born in New Hampshire) de- 
livered an address called "A Protest Against Negro Slavery," 
which, for a time, shook the moral world in Massachusetts as 
an earthquake shakes the natural world. John Adams heard 
the words of Otis, and "shuddered at the doctrine he taught," 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 47 

and to the end of his long life continued 'to shudder at the 
consequences that may be drawn from such premises." The 
views expressed by Otis must have sounded strangely in the 
ears of men who lived (as John Adams himself says he did) 
''for many years in times when the practice (of slavery) was 
not disgraceful, when the best men in my vicinity thought it 
not inconsistent with their character. " If there was a prevailing 
public sentiment against slavery in Massachusetts — as has been 
constantly claimed of late — the people of that day, far less 
demonstrative than their descendants, had an extraordinary 
way of not showing it. More than a century passed away before 
all the ancient badges of servitude could be removed from the 
colored races in Massachusetts, if indeed it be even now true 
that none of these disabilities which so strongly mark the social 
status of the negro still linger in the legislation of that State. 

I will now present some efforts of legislation in Massachu- 
setts to abolish slavery in that State, and it will be noticed that 
these efforts did not begin until the Puritans had occupation of 
Massachusetts for 150 years. The first indication of life in the 
consciences of Puritans on the subject of slavery that I have 
been able to find occurred in the little town of "Worcester, which 
in 1765 instructed its representative in the General Court, to 
"use his influence to obtain a law to put an end to that un- 
christian and impolitic practice of making slaves of the human 
species," and that "he give his vote for none to serve in His 
Majesty's Council who wnll use their influence against such a 
law." This appears in a Boston News-Letter. In the same year 
Boston took a hand in the game "for the total abolition of 
slavery among us" and to prohibit the importation and the 
purchasing of slaves for the future. In 1767, at a town-meeting, 
the same course was taken to instruct the representatives. 

In 1767 the first movement was made in the legislature to 
procure the passage of an Act against slavery and the slave- 
trade. Introduced on the 13th of March. It was read a first 
time, and the question was moved whether a second reading be 
referred to the next session of the General Court, which was 
passed in the negative. Then it was moved that a clause be 
brought into the bill for a limitation to a certain time, and the 
question being put it was passed in the affirmative ; and it was 



48 TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 

further ordered that the bill be read again on the following day 
at ten o'clock. On the 14th the question was put whether the 
third reading be referred to the next May session. This passed 
in the negative, and it was ordered that the Bill be read a 
third time "on Monday next at three o'clock." 

On the 16th the Bill came up and after a debate it was 
ordered that the matter "subside." (That was the Puritan's 
soft, euphemistic substitute for the word "lost" or "killed.") 
But a committee of three was appointed to bring in another 
Bill for laying a duty of import on slaves imported into the 
Province. On the 17th that Bill came up. (This was a substitute, 
it will be observed, for the abolition of slavery in the Colony.) 
This bill was read a first and second time, and ordered for a 
third reading on the next day at 11 o 'clock. 

On the 18th the question was put whether the enacting of 
this Bill should be referred to the next May session, "that the 
mind of the country may be known thereupon." (A qualified 
form of our present day referendum.) This passed in the nega- 
tive. Then another cautious legislator moved whether a clause 
should be brought in to limit the continuance of the Act for the 
term of one year. Passed in the affirmative and ordered that 
the bill be recommitted. The committee reported the bill to 
Council on the 19th of March. On the 20th it was read a second 
time and passed to be engrossed, and sent down to the House 
of Representatives for concurrence. The members read it and 
unanimously non-concurred. 

And thus the bill disappeared and was lost, that is to say 
it "subsided." Mr. Moore says : "It was the nearest approach 
to an attempt to abolish slavery, within our knowledge, in all 
the Colonial and Provincial legislation of Massachusetts. ' ' How 
bravel}^ the determination to abolish that vile crime of slavery 
took the field in 1767, and after going through an experience 
with the legislators, who were instructed to abolish slavery, it 
came out so battered and hacked that its friends could not 
recognize it, it being a bill for laying an import on the impor- 
tation of negroes and other slaves. 

In 1771 the subject of the slave trade came up again in the 
legislature of Massachusetts, and a bill to prevent the importa- 
tion from Africa was read the first time, the next day it was 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 49 

read a second time and postponed to the following Tuesday, and 
on that day the bill was recommitted. 

On the 19th another bill to prevent the importation of negro 
slaves in the Province was read the first time. On the 20th it 
was read a second time and ordered to be read again "on 
Monday next, at three o'clock." On the 22nd it was read the 
third time, and passed to be engrossed. On the 24th it was 
read and passed to be enacted. It was then sent up to the 
Council for concurrence. The Council proposed an amendment, 
which was passed, and sent back to the House ; the House con- 
sidered the amendment, concurred with the Honorable Board 
therein, and sent the bill up to the Honorable Board. It ap- 
peared that this bill was vetoed by Gov. Hutchinson. 

In 1773 an attempt to discourage the slave trade was 
renewed. It will be noted that the efforts to abolish it had 
dropped out of view. This bill was to prevent the importa- 
tion of negroes into Massachusetts. The constituents in in- 
structing their representatives to prevent the slave-trade in 
]\Iassachusetts suggested two ways. First, by laying a heavy 
duty on every negro imported or brought from Africa or else- 
where into that Province, or by making a law that every negro 
brought or imported aforesaid should be a free man or woman 
as soon as they come within the jurisdiction of it, and that 
every negro child that should be born after enacting such law 
should be free at the same age as the children of white people 
are. This discloses further evidence on the question as to 
whether children born of negro slaves in Masachusetts were free. 
If they were there was no necessity for the legislature to enact 
that they should be free at the age of twenty-one. 

Other representatives were instructed on the same line. 

In 1774 a bill to prevent the importation of negroes and 
other slaves into this Province was introduced, read, and 
ordered to be read again the next day. The next day, in the 
afternoon, the third reading took place, and the bill was passed 
to be engrossed, when it was sent up to the Council Board for 
concurrence. On the 4th of March the bill was returned as 
"passed in Council with Amendments." On the 5th the House 
voted to concur with the Council, and on the 7th passed the 
bill to be enacted. On the 8th it received the final sanction of 



50 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

the Council, and only required the approval of the Governor to 
become a law. Mr. Moore remarks, ''That approval, however, 
it failed to obtain; the only reason given in the record being 
that 'the Secretary said (on returning the approved bills) that 
His Excellency had not had time to consider the other Bills that 
had been laid before him,' and so the bill 'subsided.' " 

Such was the response of the Great and General Court of 
Massachusetts to the petition of her negro slaves in 1773-74. 
They prayed that they might be liberated from bondage and 
made freemen of the community, and that this Court would give 
and grant to them some part of the unimproved lands belong- 
ing to the Province for a settlement, or relieve them "in such 
other way as shall seem good and wise." Not one of their 
prayers was answered. 

In the first Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, October 
25, 1774, Mr. Wheeler brought into Congress a letter directed 
to Doc. Appleton, in effect as follows: "That while we are 
attempting to free ourselves from our present embarrassments, 
and preserve ourselves from slavery, that we also take into con- 
sideration the state and circumstances of the negro slaves in this 
Province. ' ' The same was read, and it was moved that a Com- 
mittee be appointed to take it into consideration. After some 
debate thereon, the question was put, "whether the matter now 
subside," and it passed in the affirmative. A resolution passed 
by the Committee of Safety (Hancock and Warren) in 1775, 
protested against any slaves being admitted into the army upon 
any consideration whatever. It was introduced in the Provincial 
Congress and Mr. Moore remarks "It was probably allowed to 
'subside' like the former proposition." The prohibition against 
the admission of slaves into the Massachusetts Army clearly 
recognizes slavery as an existing institution. 

Deacon Benjamin Colman, of Newbury, Massachusetts, in 
1774, says: "And this iniquity is established by law in this 
province." The same learned Deacon, in a letter addressed to 
the General Court, says: "Was Boston the first port on this 
Continent that began the slave-trade, and are they not the first 
shut up by an oppressive act, and brought almost to desolation, 
wherefore. Sir, though we may not be peremptory in applying 
the judgments of God, yet I can not pass over such providence 



TRUE VINDICATION OT THE SOUTH 51 

without a remark." The oppressive act that shut up and 
brought Boston almost to desolation was nothing but the 
Embargo Acts made by Congress for the benefit of all the 
people. 

In 1776 two negro men captured on the high seas were 
advertised for sale at auction in Boston as a part of the cargo 
and appurtenances of a prize duly condemned in the Maritime 
Court. This awakened Massachusetts again to a small spasm 
on slavery, so on September 13th, 1776, it was resolved that a 
committee be appointed to look into it. A little more than a 
month after, on October 19th, three members were appointed 
a committee to consider the condition of the African slaves in 
Massachusetts. This resolution was concurred in by the Council 
and a committee was appointed. Mr. Moore says: "We have 
made a diligent search for further action under this resolution 
and appointment of the committee, but have failed to discover 
any trace of it. ' ' The matter was probably ' ' allowed to subside ' ' 
again. On the same day the House passed a resolution "to 
prevent the sale of two negro men lately brought into this 
State and ordered to be sold at Salem." It was read and con- 
curred in by Council, Sept. 14th, 1776. In the House of Repre- 
sentatives read and non-concurred and sent up for concurrence. 
In the Council read and concurred in and sent down for con- 
currence. In the House of Representatives read and concurred. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ADAMS ON THE PURITANS. 

I am far from claiming that I have read all or even a large 
part of the declamations at convivial gatherings, or most of the 
histories and fugitive articles relating to the Puritans, I do 
not believe any person has ever read one fiftieth of them, not 
even one preparing to write such a history. It has been 
asserted on reliable authority that the most widely read book 
is the Bible, and second to it. The Pilgrim's Progress. Reading 
places third in the list writings of different kinds and speeches 
of all kinds exploiting the Puritans. One author is credited with 
382 books, pamphlets and sermons on this subject. In all I have 
read I have not found one fair account of the crimes committed 
by the Puritans in the name of Christ and for the glory of His 
kingdom .on earth. The panegyrists, by one consent, have been 
playing the game of literary thimble-rigging for three centuries. 

Lookers-on have denounced the trick; some have written it 
up, but the children who have inherited the ancestral strain, for 
their own reputations still try to hide the sin by extolling the 
imaginary virtues of their ancestors. 

Not until near the end of the last century was there a break 
in this devoted filial line of defenders. Not before did even 
one rise up and "turn State's evidence" and tell the truth. As 
St. Paul declared himself to be a Hebrew of the Hebrews, one 
of the strictest sect, so this witness states in his written testi- 
mony that he is a Puritan of the Puritans — one descended in 
the direct line from Cotton Mather, the most distinguished priest 
of this tribe of Levi, and from Thomas Shepard, another 
preacher of fame in and for his day. This witness is as dis- 
tinguished for learning as was Cotton Mather in his generation, 
and is, in intellect and judgment, the superior of any Puritan 
of whom we have any authentic account. As Milton says of 
Abdiel he is "faithful among the faithless — faithful only he." 

This honorable Puritan is Charles Francis Adams of Boston, 
Massachusetts. Having decided to deliver a few lectures to the 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 53 

students of Harvard University, he chose the story of the Pil- 
grim Fathers. He began to rummage "over many a quaint and 
curious volume of forgotten lore," and the further he roamed — 
the deeper he delved — the more he grew amazed. His own 
words are best. He told the students. 

He delivered four lectures which are now in book form with 
the title "Massachusetts, Its History and Its Historians," 
"Apples of Gold in a Picture of Silver." But there is one fly 
in this precious ointment; still it does not vitiate the healing 
virtue of the ointment. It bears neither microbes nor bacteria, 
and indeed, on inspection that need not be close, it is discovered 
to be like the fisherman's fly — only a decoy for suckers. I quote 
his words that the decoy may be apparent. 

"For the present it is sufficient to say, 'Do men gather grapes 
of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth 
forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 
Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them.' Can it be 
possible that we are indebted for all that is good in our Federal 
and State Constitutions ; for freedom of speech, of conscience, 
of separation of Church and State, and other liberal provisions 
too numerous to recapitulate here, to a people who unanimously 
established a theocrary for their government; who enslaved 
their fellow-man; who decided private causes by quoting the 
law of the cases from a sentence in Joshua or Judges, or the 
Proverbs, who hung men and women because they exercised 
freedom of conscience and did many other abominations just 
as cruel and fiendish? But, as I have said, enough of this at 
present. I shall take this up at another time. Suffice it to say, 
that something must be conceded to a son who, moved by 
noblesse oblige, volunteers to tell the truth on his ancestors, 
and claims, in conclusion, some good, some virtue for them, 
although the claim is overwhelmingly refuted by every Journal 
of every convention that framed the Constitution of each of the 
Southern States and of the United States." 

I conclude this chapter with some pages from Mr. Adams's 
lectures, as follows: 

MASSACHUSETTS INTOLERANCE. 

" 'As the twig is bent, the tree inclines.' The Massachusetts 
twig was here and there bent; and, as it was bent, it, during 



54 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

hard upon two centuries, inclined. The question of Religious 
Toleration was, so far as Massachusetts could decide it, decided 
in 1637 in the negative. On that issue Massachusetts then 
definitely and finally renounced all claim or desire to head the 
advancing column or even to be near the head of the column ; 
it did not go to the rear, but it went well towards it, and there 
it remained until the issue was decided. But it is curious to 
note from that day to this how the exponents of Massachusetts 
polity and thought, whether religious or historical, have, so to 
speak, wriggled and squirmed in the presence of the record. 
'Shuffling,' as George Bishop, the Quaker writer, expressed 
it in 1703, 'and endeavoring, to Evade the Guilt of it, being 
ashamed to own it ; so that they seldom mention to any purpose, 
even in their histories.' They did so in 1637, when they were 
making the record up; they have done so ever since. There 
was almost no form of sophistry to which the founders of Massa- 
chusetts did not have recourse then, — for they sinned against 
light, though they deceived themselves while sinning ; and there 
is almost no form of sophistry to which the historians of Massa- 
chusetts have not had recourse since, — really deceiving them- 
selves in their attempt to deceive others. And it is to this 
aspect of the case — what may perhaps be not unfitly described 
as the filio-pietistic historical aspect of it — that I propose to 
address myself. For in the study of history there should be 
but one law for all. Patriotism, piety and filial duty have noth- 
ing to do with it; they are, inded mere snares and sources of 
delusion. The rules and canons of criticism applied in one case 
and to one character must be sternly and scrupulously applied 
in all other similar cases and to all other characters ; and, while 
surrounding circumstances should, and, indeed, must be taken 
into careful consideration, they must be taken into equal con- 
sideration, no matter who is concerned. Patriotism, in the 
study of history, is but another name for provincialism. 

"On its face, the Massachusetts record from November, 1637, 
when those of the faction which followed Anne Hutchinson 
were disarmed, disfranchised and exiled, down through the 
Baptist and Quaker persecutions to the culmination of the 
witchcraft craze at the close of the seventeenth century, does 
not seem to admit of evasion. The first decision, and the policy 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 55 

subsequently pursued in accordance with it, were distinct, au- 
thoritative and final, — against Religious Toleration. The policy 
assumed definite form after the political defeat of Vane in May, 
1637. The subsequent banishment of John Wheelwright and 
Anne Hutchinson, together with the body of their active adher- 
ents, was, as a proceeding, indisputably inquisitorial and extra- 
judicial. The offence, as well as the policy to be pursued by the 
government, was explicitly and unmistakably set forth by the 
chief executive and the presiding official at the trial of Mrs. 
Hutchinson, when Governor Winthrop said to her, — 'Your 
course is not to be suffered; * * * -we see not that any 
should have authority to set up any other exercises besides what 
authority hath already set up.' Note here again the w^ords 'set 
up any other exercises. ' Then it was maintained, and it has since 
been maintained, that the persecution in this case was 'not for 
opinion's sake,' that the magistrates did not 'challenge power 
over men's consciences,' that the government never claimed any 
power over men's private opinions ;' and, indeed only the Inqui- 
sition, as the Holy Office of Catholicism, has gone to this length. 
But where was the right so distinctly set forth in the edict of 
Galerius, and which is of the essence of Religious Toleration, — 
the right 'freely to profess private opinions' and to 'assemble 
in conventicles without fear of molestation?' The privilege of 
holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them, is of 
limited value, and one a denial of which it is difficult to enforce. 
"But Winthrop 's words speak for themselves; and in the 
subsequent history of Massachusetts the policy set forth in them 
was maintained and rigorously enforced by frequent infliction 
of the penalties of banishment and death! The public senti- 
ment behind the policy, and which insured its enforcement, 
expressed itself in many forms. Now it was in the well known 
verses found in Governor Dudlej^'s pocket after his death; — 

'Let men of God in courts and churches watch 
O'er such as do a toleration hatch. 
Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice 
To poison all with heretic and vice.' 

Again, in 1647, while the battle for Toleration was waxing 
hot in England, the Simple Cobbler of Aggawam in America 



56 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

thus delivered himself: 'My heart hath naturally detested 
f oure things : * * * Tolerations of divers Religions, or of 
one Religion in segregant shape : He that willingly assents 
to the last, if he examines his heart by day-light, his con- 
science will tell him, he is either an Atheist, or an Heretique, 
or an Hypocrite, or at best a captive to some lust : Poly-piety 
is the greatest impiety in the world. * * * It is said that 
Men ought to have Liberty of their Conscience, and that it is 
persecution to debarre them of it : I can rather stand amazed 
than reply to this : It is an astonishment to think that the 
brains of men should be parboyl'd in such impious ignorance.' 

"More than thirty years after the Rev. Nathaniel Ward 
thus expressed himself, the Rev. William Hubbard, the first his- 
torian of Massachusetts, a man of whom it was said he was 
'equal to any of his contemporaries in learning and candor, 
and superior to all as a writer,' preached the Election Sermon 
(1676) at the inauguration of Governor Leverett. In it he 
said, — 'I shall not entertain you with any sharp invective, or 
declaiming against a boundless toleration of all Religions, lest 
it should be an insinuation that some here present are inclined 
that way, which I believe there was never any occasion given 
to suspect. * * * Such opinions in Doctrine, or professions 
and practices in Religion, as are attended with any foul prac- 
tical evils, as most heresies have been, ought to be prohibited 
by public Authority, and the broaehers or fomenters of them 
punished by penal laws, according to the nature of the offence, 
like other fruits of the flesh." * * * 

"Let me now put on the stand two ministers of the church 
of Cambridge here, Urian Oakes, afterwards President of the 
College, and Thomas Shepard, second of the name. In his 
Election Sermon delivered in 1673, Urian Oakes said, — "I 
profess I am heartily for all due moderation. Nevertheless I 
must add, that I look upon an unbounded toleration as the first 
born of all abominations;' while the j^ear before Thomas Shep- 
ard had declared, — 'To tolerate all things, and to tolerate 
nothing (its an old and true maxim), both are intolerable. * * * 
Yet I Avould hope none of the Lord's husbandmen will be so 
foolish as to Sow Tares, or plead for the Saving of them, I 
mean in the way of Toleration aforesaid, when as it may be 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 57 

prevented : the light of Nature and right Reason would cry out 
against such a thing.' So much for Thomas Shepard the son; 
but I come now to Thomas Shepard the father, first pastor of 
the Cambridge church. Thomas Shepard is handed down to us 
by tradition as a divine of gentle character; — pronounced 
shortly after his death 'a silver trumpet' of the faith; Cotton 
Mather also declared that 'his daily conversation was a 
trembling walk with God.' The mind of this man would nat- 
urally incline to toleration ; — he surely on this issue should have 
been in the advance of his contemporaries. Yet in his New 
England Lamentations for Old England's Errors, printed in 
London in 1645, he expressed himself thus : — 'To cut off the hand 
of the Magistrate from touching men for their consciences will 
certainly in time (if it get ground) be the utter overthrow, as it 
is the undermining, of the Reformation begun. This opinion 
is b-ut one of the fortresses and strongholds of Satan, to keep 
his head from crushing by Christ's heele, who (forsooth) because 
he is krept into men's consciences, and because conscience is a 
tender thing, no man must here meddle with him, as if con- 
sciences were made to be the safeguard of sin and error, and of 
Satan himself, if once they can creep into them.' 

"I have cited Urian Oakes, President of Harvard College 
from 1675 to 1681. He was succeeded by Increase Mather, who 
was President from 1685 to 1701 ; and in 1685 Increase Mather 
thus delivered himself on the subject of religious liberty : ' More- 
over, sinful Toleration is an evil of exceeding dangerous con- 
sequence; Men of Corrupt minds, though they may plead for 
Toleration, and Cry up Liberty of Conscience, etc., yet if once 
they should become numerous and get power into their hands, 
none would persecute more than they. * * * And indeed 
the Toleration of all Religion and Perswasions, is the way to 
have no true Religion at all left. * * * i do believe that 
Antichrist hath not at this day a more probable way to advance 
his Kingdom of Darkness, than by a Toleration of all Religions 
and Perswasions. ' 

"But it is useless to multiply citations where all are to tbe 
same effect. If in the somewhat arid as well as meagre record 
of Massachusetts seventeenth-century utterances there are any 
which, subsequent to 1637, favor religious toleration, or breathe 



58 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

the spirit of toleration, I am not familiar with them, and would 
much like to have my attention called to them. For, in dealing 
with such a subject and making general statements in regard 
to it, the tendency always is to an appearance at least of exag- 
geration. It is attack and defence ; not a holding of equal scales. 
So in this connection I can only say that, while my investigations 
in the field referred to have brought to light many expressions 
on the subject of toleration such as those I have quoted, I fail 
to remember any of an opposite character. The record is 
sufficiently full ; but it is all one way. And, in the full light of 
that record, judicially examined and compared with the records 
of other lands during the same epoch, it is difficult to detect 
any flaw in the following indictment by George Bishop in his 
'New-England Judged.' 'For, this let me say. That tlio' more 
Blood hath been shed, and with greater Executions, and in some 
sense more cruel, by those who have not pretended to Eeligion, 
at least to Liberty of Conscience, from whom no other thing 
could be expected; * * * yet, from Men pretending to 
Religion and Conscience; who suffered for Religion and their 
Conscience; who left their Native Country, Friends and Rela- 
tives, to dwell in a Wilderness for to enjoy their Conscience 
and Religion; from Professors, who have made so much ado 
about Religion, and for their Conscience, and set themselves 
up as the Height of all Profession of Religion, and the most 
Zealous Assertors of Liberty of Conscience ; and for that Cause 
have expected to be had in regard, viz. : because of Conscience 
and Religion, for Men * * * thus to Exceed all Bounds and 
Limits of Moderation, Law, Humanity and Justice, upon a 
People, barely for their Conscience, and the Exercise of their 
Religion * * * and for you to do it, who yourselves are 
the Men (not another Generation) which so fled, which so suf- 
fered, is beyond a Parallel.' 

' * The question now arises, — Wherein did they differ in this 
respect from those of the established churches of the Old World 
against whose persecutions they so loudly and so properly bore 
witness ? 

"But the difficulty with this portion of the early record of 
Massachusetts — that of the Founders and those prior, we will 
say, to 1 660 — is not merely that it is all one way ; but, unhappily, 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 59 

in addition to breathing a strong spirit of intolerance, there 
runs through it a vein of apology and sophistical excuse, or 
implied denial, which shows that the fathers of Massachusetts 
in saying and doing what they did say and do failed to act 
wholly according to their light. In other words, they knew 
better. They once had been subjected to persecution, — they 
were themselves the victims of religious intolerance ; and, as 
is usual with those so situated, they had in that school made 
rapid advance in the lessons of toleration. Now they were in 
power and authority ; and, being so, they proved themselves no 
less intolerant than those from whose intolerance they had fled. 
They were not unaware of the fact. Conscience troubled them 
as those who suffered from their intolerance wrote down words 
like these : 'But that Avhich most of all may be the Astonishment 
and Destination of Mankind is, That (the Spirit of Persecution, 
Cruelty and Malice) should predominate in those who had 
Loudly Cried out of the Tyranny and Oppression of the Bishops 
in Old England and from whom they fled ; but when they settlea 
in a place, where they had liberty to Govern, made their little 
Finger of Cruelty bigger than ever they found the Loins of the 
Bishops. ' 

' ' Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century Massa- 
chusetts was an arena of theological conflict; and though a 
modified form of toleration was in 1780 grudgingly admitted 
into the first constitution of the State, it was not until 1833, — 
when the third century of its history was already entered upon, 
that complete liberty of conscience was made part of the funda- 
mental law. The battle of Religious Toleration had then been 
elsewhere fought and won ; Massachusetts reluctantly accepted 
the result. So far from winning laurels in that struggle, her 
record in it is in degree only less discreditable than that of 
Spain. 

' ' The trouble with the historical writers who have taken the 
task upon themselves is that they have tried to sophisticate 
away the facts. In so doing they have of necessity had recourse 
to lines of argument which they would not for an instant accept 
in defense or extenuation of those who in the Old "World pursued 
the policy with which thej'" find themselves confronted in the 
early record of the New. But there that record is ; and it will not 



60 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

out. Roger Williams, John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson 
come back from their banishment, and stand there as witnesses; 
the Quakers and Baptists, with eyes that 'forever glare, swing 
from the gallows or turn at the cart's tail. In Spain it was the 
dungeon, the rack and the fagot ; in Massachusetts it was banish- 
ment, the whip and the gibbet. In neither case can the records 
be obliterated. Between them it is only a question of degree, — 
one may in color be a dark drab, while the other is unmistakably 
a jetty black. The difficulty is with those who, while expatiating 
with great force of language on the sooty aspect of the one, 
turn and twist the other in the light, and then solemnly assev- 
erate its resemblance to driven snow. Unfortunately for those 
who advocate this view of the respective Old and New World 
records, the facts do not justify it. On the contrary, while 
the course in the matter of persecution pursued by those in 
authority in the Old World was logical and does admit of 
defence, the course pursued by the founders of Massachu- 
setts was illogical, and does not admit of more than partial 
extenuation. 

"The man who has suffered from those in authority for 
opinion's sake must not, when in his turn clothed with authority, 
inflict for opinion's sake suffering on others; and, if he does 
so, he and his posterity must accept the consequences. What 
greater hypocrisy than for those who were oppressed by the 
bishops to become the greatest oppressors themselves, so soon 
as their yoke was removed; and the sophistry to which the 
representative Massachusetts divines had recourse in reply was 
no less sophistry then and to them, than it is to us now. On the 
pleadings they stand convicted. So much for the early clergy. 
As to the magistrates, in the mouths of James I. and Charles I., 
— of Philip II. of Spain or Louis XIV. of France, the words — 
'We see not that any should have authority to set up any other 
exercises besides what authority had already set up,' — these 
words in those mouths would have had a familiar as well as 
an ominous sound. To certain of those who listened to them, 
they must have had a sound no less ominous when uttered by 
Governor John Winthrop in the Cambridge meeting-house on 
the 17th of November, 1637. John Winthrop, John Endicott 
and Thomas Dudley were all English Puritans. As such they 



TRUE VINDICATION 0¥ THE SOUTH 61 

had sought refuge, from authority, in Massachusetts. On what 
ground can the impartial historian withhold from them the 
judgment he visits on James and Philip and Charles and Loi^is ? 
The fact would seem to be that the position of the latter was 
logical though cruel ; while the position of the former was cruel 
and illogical." 



CHAPTER X. 

THE SITUATION IN 1860-61. 

I will now give the social and political situation in the 
States called the United States in 1860-61. To do this it will 
not be necessary to track the Puritans in England before they 
first took flight to Holland, nor to notice much of their devious 
conduct while sojourning there. What they did in Holland 
has no direct bearing on the issue between the North and the 
South, but the animus that controlled them in some of their 
deliberate actions for two hundred and fifty years, and en- 
tered into their treatment of the people of the South, must 
be noticed. One transaction illustrates this animus. It was 
the petition in which Brewster and Robinson, two of their 
greatest and most pious leaders, lied to King James by saying 
in plain words they subscribed fully to the Faith of the Estab- 
lished Church — from which they fled to Holland and which 
Faith they kicked into the fire as soon as they landed at Ply- 
mouth. Nor would I but for the animus stir the malodorous 
horrors that fill their 

"Pleasant valley of Hinnom. Tophet them 
And black Gehenna called — the type of hell," 

wherein the sainted Puritan priests of Moloch sacrificed on 
the gallows with impartial hand captured Indian warriors; 
Indians not captured ; old women, their neighbors and of their 
own blood and faith; children (girls) of their own blood, too 
young to understand religious faith, but old enough, said 
the Puritan priests, tp be midnight associates of and revelers 
with the Devil, riding old women in the air, and to learn how 
to become adepts in all the deadly magic of witchcraft; Quak- 
ers who made noisy demonstration, whereas the Puritans' in- 
sanity on religion made them sullen, silent, and brutal, and 
as the two — the boisterous and silent — could not worship ac- 
ceptably to the Puritans' confidential God together, the Quak- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 63 

€rs were hanged to make them keep silent. These few pastimes 
of the Puritans are mentioned that the reader may have just 
here a glimpse at the nature of the people the Southern 
States entered into partnership with in 1787. No argument 
is needed to show their lamentable deficiencies, their insanity 
on religion, their avarice, their readiness to force every obstacle 
out of their way, whether animate or inanimate, mental as con- 
victions, or spiritual as religion; whether professions of love, 
of personal liberty, or of friendship and personal honor; all 
of which, and more to be told hereafter, had to go down be- 
fore that one insatiable craving — avarice! 

This chapter is written to demonstrate, not to the Puritans 
nor their allies in the Abolition War — whether they be the 
serfs they raked from the expanse of Europe, or their three 
hundred thousand stolen negro-slaves and icompatriots, or the 
foreigners already on the soil, who, knowing nothing of per- 
sonal liberty at home, nor of the nature of the government 
whose blessings they had come here to enjoy, were inveigled 
into the ranks of war by false cries of ' ' Rebellion ! " " Treason ! ' ' 
"Save the Union!" sugared by big bounties and seventeen 
dollars and fifty cents a month — no, not to them, but to demon- 
strate to that vast body of statesmen whose seats are high, as 
they overlook the ruling nations of the earth and, by Wisdom 
and Justice, keep the world in balance, and whose great ances- 
tors, starting with one fundamental principle — **the rights of 
man in the state of Nature" — and making it the corner-stone, 
pillar after pillar, pedestal, column, pilaster, architrave and 
dome, so expansive and secure that under it all nations of the 
earth that do justice and love mercy, are asesmbled, and where 
the least among them is as great as the greatest. These are the 
rulers — the noblemen who, when they enter into a solemn 
covenant to the good faith of which they ** pledge their lives, 
their fortunes and sacred honor," abide by it forever; who, 
when they covenant that anything alive or dead is property, 
never, by slipping in like negroes to a henroost, violate theic 
oaths by stealing it ; who, when they enter into a covenant, 
never plead a century after, as an excuse for breaking it, that 
they found a "Higher Law;" who, when confronted with a 
covenant entered into by their fathers but a generation past, 



64 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

do not dishonor their fathers who died to bequeath to their 
sons freedom and wealth, by charging them as fools and 
knaves for entering into a compact that is "a covenant with 
Death and an agreement with Hell" and then making war 
on the other party to that covenant and, after applauding 
their fathers for denouncing King George III for employing 
Indians to butcher them, stealing negro slaves they sold to 
Southern masters and enlisting two hundred thousand in their 
army to murder their masters and families. 

I said in the first chapter I was not writing this book to 
convince the Puritans; that I care nothing for their opinion. 
I am writing to reach the statesmen referred to above; and yet 
not so much for them as for the youth of the Southern States, 
that they may know the truth and do honor to their fathers 
who were in the right in every dispute with the North from 
1790 to this date. This I declare not in a spirit of boasting, 
for, should I ever descend to that grade, I shall look for some 
cause much more creditable than being in the right in any 
controversy with Puritan fanatics, I would not do so if I 
did not have the proof to make good the assertion. 

After the thirteen States had won their freedom and each, 
by name, had been acknowledged by Great Britain to be "Free 
and Independent," for reasons needless to be repeated in this 
connection they saw the necessity for uniting and acting 
together for their "common defense and general welfare." 
They agreed to create a common agent to represent them 
abroad in all matters international, and at home in the exclus- 
ive exercise of a few of the powers common to each State. But 
several obstacles at home were in their way. One was negro 
slavery in nearly all the States ; another was the conflictin« m^ 
terests of the commercial and the agricultural States — there 
being about half in each group. 

During 150 years the Puritans, all settled in New England, 
had been rivals of Spaniards, Portuguese and English in the 
African slave trade. Massachusetts was the queen bee in the 
New England hive, engaged in gathering this honey in Africa. 
She built the first American slave ship in 1636 and received 
the first cargo of negro slaves in 1638. The profits of the 
trade were irresistibly seductive to the avarice of the Puritan. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 65 

It overcame and subdued his virtue that had paraded through 
England and Holland proclaiming personal liberty and equal 
rights for all men. When Avarice had brushed off the veneer 
(stripped off that mask of the hypocrite and he was openly 
exposed), he decided not to wear the shame without deserving 
the blame, and he fell to building slave ships as a business. 
This progressed until at one period the little village of New- 
port was the haven for 150 slave-trade vessels. Every colony 
was stocked with negro slaves. From Delaware to Georgia 
each State was indebted to New England for slave labor. 

And even this diabolical traffic, whose continuous phos- 
phorescent wake across the Atlantic rivalled at night the glow 
of the Milky Way, and planted mile stones along that watery 
wilderness with negroes murdered in "The Middle Passage," 
Puritan historians have vainly striven for a hundred years to 
fasten on foreigners and the Southern States. To the base- 
ness of the subterfuge of this lame attempt to flee from Jus- 
tice there was one notable exception. He was New' England's 
shield, Protector — the Great High Priest and Prophet at whose 
feet she knelt and prayed "Give us this day our daily bread." 



CHAPTER XI. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

The more we know of biographies of our great men, the better 
we understand our history. In fact, the world has but recently 
learned that history is biography multiplied. The third chapter, 
Vol. I., of Macaulay's History of England, has taught us how 
to write the complement to history. Who, after finishing the 
reading of a volume of Ancient History, has not felt as he laid 
it down as tho' he had been stuffed with trash and sawdust. 
Take, for instance, the stories we have been told of the world's 
greatest intellectual wonder — ''The Blind Old Bard of Scio's 
Rocky Isle." He has been held on stationary exhibition for 
thousands of years as a Cosmic Santa Glaus, decorated from 
head to heel with marvelous gewgaws, the gayest ribbons and 
sweetest bonbons, to be handed out to each succeeding genera- 
tion to delight its babyhood. It is true that he lived in an 
age of what we call ''fable," when history was scarcely written ; 
when no less than seven cities claimed his birthplace, but it is 
too much for human credulity to be told that this blind old 
man had caught floating on the air a thousand fugitive legends, 
not one any more connected with the others than is a story 
of the Arabian Nights with one of St. Paul's epistles; and that, 
with the power of a magician, he wove them together, changing 
and reordering to give them form, expression and continuity, 
until they appeared in all the silken tapestry and beauty of the 
Iliad and the Odyssey. 

During thirty-five years of his life the opinions of Daniel 
Webster had a very marked influence on all the separate States, 
and on the political action of the people in the Northern 
States. In both relations — the States and the people — that 
influence produced results disastrous to the entire country. 
As usual, the good lies buried with his bones — the evil lives 
after him. A critical study of this one life affords more material 
for an understanding of that part of our history than does the 
biography of any other man; and the actual time occupied in 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 67 

expressing the opinions that worked the evil was less than one 
day. The first event was his argument in the celebrated case 
of The Dartmouth College vs. Woodward ; and the second was 
his reply in the United States Senate to Robert Y. Hayne. The 
third was his reply to John C. Calhoun. No single argument 
has had such far-reaching and disastrous elffect on property 
rights of citizens of the United States as Mr. Webster's in the 
Dartmouth College case, and no single speech has ever insti- 
gated and hastened such widespread devastation and ruin in 
any country, in any age, as the one delivered in reply to Hayne. 
He delivered very many speeches and addresses on a variety of 
subjects, but these three are the chiefest. They stand out as 
bold, lofty promontories on the current of his life. The only 
other speech I shall review is his valedictory to his ruined 
country on the 7th of March, 1850, when, with the courage of 
a martyr calmly viewing the kindling of the fagots that are to 
consume him, he rose in the Senate and offered himself a 
willing sacrifice on the altar of his country, in atonement for 
the wrong he had done her in the same Council Chamber where 
resounded the echoes of his speech of January, 1830, just 
twenty years before. But, this farewell address did his country 
no harm, whereas the injustice of the Dartmouth speech runs on 
in perpetuity, and the evil of the replies to Hayne and to Calhoun 
bore their first national curse in disunion, war, fraticide and 
perpetual enmity. All his other speeches were incident to tem- 
porary occurrences and recurrences — such as men in public life 
in America are often called upon to make. I do not now recall 
one speech (excepting the three named) that survives to bless 
or to plague our country. 

His position as a debater is in the front rank of every age 
and every country. As a speaker he was strong, attractive, 
convincing. Being by association a federalist, he took up with 
joy and wore with ease the massive armor that fell from the 
gigantic figure of Alexander Hamilton, when the vicious bullet 
of Aaron Burr snuffed out that brilliant but baleful light. 
But, as oratory is understood by Americans, Mr. Webster was 
not a great orator. At no time was he like Demosthenes attack- 
ing Philip, or Cicero assaulting Catiline, nor had he Sheridan's 
electric flashes when playing around and peeling Warren Hast- 



68 TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 

ings. Nor was he such an orator as George Whitefield, William 
Pinkney, Wm. "Wirt, Patrick Henry, Seargent S. Prentiss, Wm. 
C. Preston, Geo. F. Pierce and many others. His style was not 
attractive ; it did not beget imitators as did those I have named 
— especially Pierce and Whitefield. He lacked Demosthenes 's 
definition of an orator — "Action! Action! Action!" While 
speaking he usually kept his left hand under his coat-tail, and 
rarely gesticulated with his right hand. In fact, he not only 
did not study nor practice any of the graces, or vocal efforts, of 
oratory, but he ignored them. He seemed absorbed by his sub- 
ject. He had none of the facial and gesticulatory interpreta- 
tion that convey to hearers the delicate shades of meaning that 
tone of voice and the power of words can not convey: the art 
that assimilates nature and which is the gift of every great 
orator and actor. 

Oratory as popularly understood by English speaking people 
was not a gift to the Puritans. From the first appearance of the 
Puritans above the horizon in England to the Revolution of 
1776, there were no orators of national reputation among them. 
Poets are born, orators are not. Oratory is a social develop- 
ment; there must be instigation — a prevailing stimulus that 
arises from environment. No man orates in solitude to the 
wilderness. Demosthenes practiced on the seashore, but his 
audience was waiting in Athens. Abstract oratory springs from 
the emotions of the speaker and goes directly to the emotions 
of the hearer. It does not move through reason to the emotions ; 
it is independent of reason. Oratory in the concrete seizes both 
reason and emotions and directs them at will. 

It is more than doubtful whether Mr. Webster, with the 
assiduous study of a life time, could have made himself a 
great orator. He was of ponderous physical mold. His fea- 
tures were heavy, immobile, and when at rest, stern and almost 
saturnine. This he might have modified, but he could not 
have overcome the impress on his nature made by the cir- 
cumstances surrounding his birth and his education. If not a 
Puritan by descent, as is claimed, still his ancestors had lived 
in New England so long that they were Puritans in faith, in 
habits, in practice, temperament and religion. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 69 

During the century of Puritan oocupation in England, be- 
fore their migration to America, according to their account, 
there was oppression more than enough to have produced 
many orators. But their records are barren of orators. 

As no orators were propagated among the Puritans in Eng- 
land or Holland, during the religious and civic heat and 
ferocity that followed the Reformation, it was not to be ex- 
pected that any would be begotten after the migration to 
America, where civic strife and religious ferocity were im- 
proved upon by imprisonment, the pillory, the cat-o-nine-tails, 
starving and the Tyburn Gibbet. That gibbet, be it ever remem- 
bered, was not to break the necks of men and women for 
murder, but to hang neighbors and friends because they icould 
not believe an impossible creed — a creed that in the century 
from 1775 to 1875 was battered into pulp in New England by 
the "apostolic blows and knocks" of the children of the Puri- 
tans who murdered their neighbors for nonconformity to it. 

The latest Northern opinion of note, and one ex cathedra, 
on Mr. Webster as an orator is by the Rev. B. F. Tefft, D. D., 
L. L. D., in his preface to a recent volume containing eleven 
speeches by Mr. Webster which Dr. Tefft considers to be the 
greatest of the many he delivered. He says: 

"It is to be hoped that his style of elocution — calm, slow, 
dignified, natural, unambitious, and yet direct and powerful, 
will take the place of the showy, flowery, flashy, fitful and bois- 
terous sort of speeches which seem to be becoming too com- 
mon; which so breaks down the health of the speaker, and 
which is nevertheless most likely to strike the feelings and 
corrupt the judgment of the young, * * * j have never 
heard Mr. Webster, even when most excited, raise his voice 
higher or sink it lower, or utter his words more rapidly than 
he could do consistently with the most perfect ease. He never 
played the orator. What he had to say he said as easily, as 
naturally and yet as forcibly as possible, with such a voice as 
he used in common conversation, only elevated and strength- 
ened to meet the demands of his large audience. So intent 
did he seem to be, so intent he certainly was, in making his 
hearers see and feel as he did, in relation to the subject of the 
hour, that no one thought of his manner, or whether he had 



70 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

any manner, until the speech was over. That is oratory, true 
oratory, and it is to be hoped that the more general distribu- 
tion of these masterpieces will have the ultimate effect of mak- 
ing this the American standard of oratory from this age to 
all future ages." 

Dr. Tefft's opinion of oratory and of orators, I am sure 
will not be approved by any Southern man. On the contrary, 
the facts he gives will convince all that Mr. Webster was not 
an orator. He, like Mr. Calhoun, was a reasoner, a logician; 
neither was gifted, as all orators are, with strong imagination. 
I doubt, from Dr. Tefft's opinion of oratory, that he ever heard 
an orator. A noted orator from a Southern State spoke in 
New York City one night about 1837. Two preachers, having 
heard how he could hold an audience, agreed to hear him. 
When they arrived at the door of the hall, one said, "Let's 
look at our watches and time him." At that moment the 
speaker uttered his first sentence. He spoke two hours. When 
he closed, the preachers were standing at the door with their 
watches in their hands, as when he began. Captivated by the 
first words, they had forgotten to sit down or to pocket their 
watches. When this orator — Seargent S. Prentiss, of Missis- 
sippi — as contestant for a seat in the House of Congress, by 
permission of the House delivered his speech, the Senators, 
without formal adjournment, went to the House to hear him. 
Daniel Webster was greatly interested. As he listened, a Sena- 
tor by him said : ' ' Mr. Webster, did you ever hear anything 
equal to that?" ''Never!" Webster replied, ''except from 
Prentiss himself." 

Dr. Teft't resides in a region where true oratory has been 
unknown since the day of James Otis. It was suft'ocated by 
Puritanism, fanaticism, commerce and avarice. It cannot sur- 
vive a day in pawnshops, factories, whaling vessels and slave 
traders. The Puritan's eloquence was and is "the parcel of 
a reckoning." In the effectiveness of that vocabulary he has 
no superior, if any equal. 

In presenting this view of Mr. Webster as a speaker, I 
accord to him ability equal to that of any other American 
statesman. I wish to save American youths from being led 
astray by the false ascendancy imputed to Mr. Webster by a 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 71 

gentleman whose honorary titles alone of D. D, and L, L. D. 
might induce the untutored mind to accept the learned Doe- 
tor's view of oratory and of what makes an orator. 

With the data now in hand, we can consider Mr. Webster 
as orator, statesman, citizen and patriot. When Doctors differ, 
laymen are at sea. And among Mr. Webster's intimate ac- 
quaintances and personal friends there is a wide difference of 
opinion on his position as an orator. This disagreement is 
accountable for on two grounds: First, the capacity of these 
judges to decide what is oratory, and, second, the extent of 
their acquaintance with orators. They all assign Mr. Webster 
to the highest position as an orator, but when they go into 
details and describe his style of speaking, they leave him as 
a great debater only. This no one can deny, that, as a logician 
he has had few superiors. Logic, however, is but one of the 
elements of oratory, and one of the least. The speaker who 
by cold logic alone reaches the judgment, is in no sense an 
orator. This eft'ect may be produced by the essayist, by the 
Judge by his judicial opinion, by the lawyer addressing a court 
on a question involving the Rule in Shelly 's Case, by the black- 
smith over his anvil. Passion in its broadest sense — deep 
emotion — conviction — "action — action — action" — imagination 
— easy and apt expression by word, face and gesture — are the 
chief elements and gifts of a great orator. A full, sonorous, 
well modulated voice is a most effective adjunct, but not a 
necessity to an orator. 

All biographers of Mr. Webster are of opinion that he was 
a great orator. Some rank him with Demosthenes, Cicero, Lord 
Chatham (Pitt) and Burke, and say he has no equal in America. 
But when they describe him while speaking, the description 
falls short of this opinion, or proves there are "many men of 
many minds" as to what oratory is. Henry Cabot Lodge, one 
biographer, declares that Mr. Webster was deficient in "cre- 
ative imagination" — a fact patent in all his speeches., This 
clips the wings which are as necessary to an orator as to a poet, 
though not to the same degree. Another biographer says Mr. 
Webster seldom gesticulated, and then with the right arm. 
The latest biographer (1911) Sydney George Fisher, Ltt. D. 
L. L. D., devotes a chapter to Webster's "eloquence." He 



72 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

draws a comparison between Webster, Burke, and Lord Chat- 
ham, but it is not as orators, but as stylists. He ranks Webster 
among the few greatest orators, but he fails to characterize his 
oratory. His quotations from several speeches do not de- 
scribe the orator. They show his thoughts and his ability to 
clothe them in gorgeous apparel. Oratory consists of two es- 
sentials — first, the mental operation, and, second, the physical 
delivery, which includes voice, tones, gestures, facial expres- 
sion and action. Briefly described, oratory consists of manner 
as well as matter. The mental product is all that Dr. Fisher 
considers. Edmund Burke was not a great orator. He emptied 
the House of Commons, but as a rhetorician he has no equal. 
Richard Brinsley Sheridan had not the magic wand of Burke 
to summon the tropes, similes and metaphors from the mind's 
vasty deep that came in royal array at his bidding, but on the 
trial of Warren Hastings for despoiling the Begums in India, 
the address of Sheridan before the House of Lords was incom- 
parably more powerful than the speech of Burke. In fact, 
that greatest master of the English language pronounced Sheri- 
dan's speech as the grandest oration that was ever uttered by 
human lips. And the world, with deliberate judgment, has 
affirmed that opinion. 

But it is waste of time and words to discuss with any son 
of New England the status of Daniel Webster as an orator. 
When she "makes up her mind" on any question she is "sot." 
(I beg to say I am indebted for that euphonious classicism to 
our most admirably amiable President* who for years has been 
running to and fro over the land that ballots might be increased, 
and dropping, like the good little girl blessed by the good Fairy, 
whenever he opened his mouth, precious gems among vast multi- 
tudes of the Faithful. I recall at present but one other instance 
of such delicious verbal extravagance. It was a peroration to a 
lofty imaginary, eloquent flight by the same orator, ending in 
the brilliant burst, * ' I will now get down to brass tacks. ' ' As the 
subject under consideration is oratory of the highest order, I 
make no apology for the introduction of those two appropriate 
classical gems.) 

*Mr. Taft. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 73 

There is a way open to settle forever and beyond cavil the 
question whether Daniel Webster was one of the world's few 
great orators. It is a quasi judicial procedure. New England 
contends that he is. She holds the affirmative and has pro- 
claimed it lustily since 1830. When a plaintiff goes into court 
he is supposed to make the strongest statement of his case that 
the facts will afford. It is fair, therefore, to assume that New 
England, through her many biographies of Webster has ex- 
hausted her accumulation of proof to raise him to the highest 
pinnacle as an orator. But to get a decision of a court there 
must be law as well as facts. Neither is of any use without the 
other. There must be a standard by which to judge oratory. 
The standard, if there be one, is the law to be applied to the 
facts before judgment can be rendered. Lack of this standard is 
the cause of dispute. Each man has his own standard and that 
is the law he applies, and gives judgment. If the law — if the 
true standard — could be found, the law that neither plaintiff 
nor defendant (the public in this case) could object to, a correct 
judgment could be arrived at readily. Fortunately for all par- 
ties concerned the law that controls the case is in hand. It is 
law that New England can not question. That is about the 
most hazardous declaration any man can make, in view of her 
action in church- and State for three hundred years. Neverthe- 
less, I shall let it stand; I should have said I will not question 
it, because it is the law as expounded by her greatest son, her 
wisest statesman, her strongest intellect, her greatest orator, 
her dearest idol — excepting one only, the man, John Brown, 
whom New England deified in 1859. In the opinion of New 
England, there has lived but one man whom the description 
here given could possibly fit, and he was Daniel Webster. In 
that surmise she is correct, for he announced the law of oratory 
and eloquence in his eulogy on Jefferson and Adams, as follows : 
' ' Clearness, force and earnestness are the qualities which pro- 
duce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in 
speech. It can not be brought from far. Labor and learning 
may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases 
may be marshaled in every way, but they can not compass it. 
It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. 
Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, 



74 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

all may aspire after it; they can not reach it. It comes, if it 
comes at all, like the outbursting of a fountain from the earth, 
or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, origi- 
nal native force. * * * The clear conception, outrunning 
the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the 
dauntless spirit speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, 
informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, 
right onward to his object — this, this is eloquence, or rather, 
it is something greater and higher than eloquence, it is action, 
noble, sublime, godlike action." 

Those who doubt can lay side by side Dr. Tefft's description 
of "Webster's oratory and Webster's description of oratory, and 
decide whether there are any two features alike. Dr. Tefft 
says : ' ' "Webster as an orator was ' calm, slow, dignified, natural, 
unambitious,' " "Webster's idea of oratory: "It comes, if it 
comes at all, like the outbursting of a fountain from the earth, 
or the bursting forth of volcanic fire with spontaneous original 
native force." 



CHAPTER Xn. 
MORE AS TO WEBSTER'S ORATORY- 
SOME OF HIS FAULTS. 

I have said that the error in assigning to Mr. Webster the 
station of first orator in America may be due to two causes — 
first, the incapacity to decide what is oratory, and, second, the 
extent of the acquaintance of these judges with orators. With- 
out assuming any superior judgment on the question of oratory, 
I will submit my reason for that remark. It is a fact that no 
one who is well informed on the debates in Congress, on the 
hustings and on the sermons in the pulpit from colonial days to 
1861, will deny that the most effective orators were Southern 
men. The strongest statesmen were also Southerners. The rea- 
sons for this are obvious. The men of the North, as a rule, were 
men of affairs, were merchants, traders on land and on seas. 
They thought then, as now, in dollars and cents. This, in part, 
was from necessity. The climate was severe ; the working days 
were few as compared with the seasons in the South; living 
was strenuous, and arithmetic was more attractive than rhetoric. 
When they put their tools aside, stopped their plows in the 
furrow, or laid down the yard stick, to listen to a talker, they 
insisted on hearing something besides gab, something that 
would pay, that could better their condition. Again, in the 
main, they were Puritans. The ruling classes were Puritans. 
And as their history shows, they were actuated by two controll- 
ing forces, one religious fanaticism and the other insatiable 
avarice. Those who were not Puritans, if they escaped the virus 
of fanaticism, by association and absorption contracted the 
vice of greed for gold. It was the latter that drove them to the 
high seas as whalers, and, especially, as hunters of negroes in 
Africa to sell them as slaves to whomsoever would pay the 
price. These occupations were not stimulants of the most effec- 
tive of human agencies — oratory. They were not a hot bed to 
sprout young orators. 



76 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

There was another reason for the deficiency of oratory in 
the Northern or free States. It was the depressing effect on 
the mind and the emotions of Puritanism. Its repellent ascet- 
icism, its sullen serenity, its religious fanaticism, its tyrannical 
espionage over family relations, its sanctimonious precisian- 
ism, its inquisitorial constabulary, its Sabbatarian Arctic atmos- 
phere, and Pharisaism, were more than enough to freeze all 
emotions in the bud, and to repress every form of eloquence. 
But of all agencies for stifling any growth of oratory, the 
worst or most effective were the sermons in the Puritan "meet- 
ing house" on the Sabbath. Attendance was compulsory on 
fathers, mothers, children, bachelors, spinsters, widowers and 
widows. This was the chief duty of a Puritan, and failure to 
perform it was punishable by fine, or, in default of payment, 
with imprisonment, and, in some instances, with banishment, 
or sentence by the High Court to slavery for life among negro 
slaves in the Barbadoes or West Indies. This condition was 
about as conducive to eloquence as wearing the bilbo, or stand- 
ing in the pillory, all of one day in every week. 

But there was another ordeal the young victims were forced 
to undergo, to which, in comparison, the sweat-box was equal 
to a watermelon patch to a negro. This was the style of oratory 
and the matter of the long-winded sermons seasoned with 
brimstone and hellfire, and that grated on their nerves from 
four to six hours every Sunday. For more than a century after 
Plymouth Rock succeeded the Tarpeian Rock in its bloody 
sacrifice, there was not a preacher in the entire Puritan hier- 
archy who could be classed as an orator, nor was there a lay- 
man an, orator until the soul of James Otis was set on fire 
by the rising flame that produced the conflagration of 1776. 
The pulpits were filled by dialecticians, by didacticians, by 
exegetists, by scholiasts, commentators, expounders of Scrip- 
ture, egotistic bigots, ignorant aspirants to be expositors and 
eluciclators of St. Paul's metaphysics. And the popular dis- 
courses, or compositions, were on the abstruse puzzles of the 
doctrine of Election, Salvation by Faith, Salvation by Works, 
the Mystery of the Triune Godhead, Original Sin, Mankind's 
Total Depravity, Baptism, Witchcraft, a Personal Devil, Hell- 
fire, Eternal Damnation, et id omne genus. The Personal Devil 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 77 

with, horus, hoofs and tail was the popular Caliban chained in 
every pulpit, ready like Jack-in-the-box to be sprung after the 
affrighted audience had been scorched by the burning brim- 
stone into hysterics. He it was who bought the souls of women 
and young girls with the Black Shilling, and then changed 
them to witches. While young and old were held fast to the 
benches by the fear of ten shillings fine, and were compelled 
to listen to what they could not understand and what the 
preachers did not understand, a guard with a staff in hand 
was stationed so he could see all faces, and if any one smiled, 
or whispered, or was fidgety or had to scratch, the guard would 
march across and tap the offender with his badge of authority 
as a warning not to repeat the oft'ense. This theological glacier 
covered New England for more than a century. Under its 
arctic breath not even the lichens of oratorical growth could 
take root. Then came, early in the eighteenth century, Jona- 
than Edwards, who, standing on the solid glacier prepared for 
his coming, with the commission of an angry God in his hand, 
lifted the lid off the seething, roaring, boiling, brimstone bil- 
lows of Hell for his panic-stricken hearers to see their certain 
destination and doom. Listen to his wrathful denunciation a 
moment before we pass on: 

"The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made 
ready on the string, and Justice bends the bow; and it is noth- 
ing but the mere pleasure of God — and that an angry God, 
without any promise or obligation at all — that keeps the arrow 
one moment from being made drunk with your blood. The 
God that holds you over the pit of Hell — much as one holds 
a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire — ^abhors you 
and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns 
like fire. He looks upon you as being worthy of nothing else 
but to be cast in the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear 
to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more 
abominable in His eyes than the most hateful venomous ser- 
pent is in ours." (Sermon "On Sinners in the Hand of an 
angry God.") An eye witness said that the hearers of Ed- 
wards were so frightened that they trembled, turned livid, 
and clutched the benches and each other from fear of falling 
into Hell. 



78 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

It is scarcely presumptuous in any one to entertain the 
opinion that even the most learned scholars with a line of 
Puritan ancestors extending through three centuries, with such 
an environment as I have imperfectly described; with such a 
succession of cold, unimpassioned ascetic preachers, who, there- 
fore, have not had the opportunity to hear great orators, are 
as well qualified to sit as judges on the question of true oratory 
as others who have heard year in and year out such orators 
as Henry Clay, William Pinkney, William Wirt, William C. 
Preston, Seargent S. Prentiss, and many, many more like them. 

Mr. Webster, coming less than a quarter of a century after 
Jonathan Edwards passed away, and being of a Puritan stock 
by whom but one great orator, George Whitefield, had ever 
been heard; never having heard a master of elocution until ho 
entered Congress, when he was thirty years old, after his own 
delivery had become seasoned and set, could not wholly escape 
the repressive influence of the stereotyped, tricentary medio 
crity that surrounded him like the encasing air. We hear 
this influence in his "slow, icalm, dignified elocution," in his 
"conversational voice," in his neglect of gesticulatory inter- 
pretation, in his lack of facial expression, except what was the 
gift of nature in his luminous eyes. We see it in his "practice 
before the glass," so to speak, as when his son, Fletcher, saw 
him — ^while angling in a brook — advance his right foot, raise 
his eyes heavenward and — his right hand pointing up — de- 
claiming: "Venerable men! You have come down to us from 
a former generation ; " or we know it by his constant revision 
of all his speeches after delivery, expunging here, adding there, 
striking Latinities and inserting Anglo-Saxonisms, so that no 
speech exists today as he delivered it. We know his deficiency 
in what Senator Lodge calls "'creative imagination." He was 
a mighty reasoner ; master of words with his pen, after deliber- 
ation, but not when on his feet, as was Prentiss, who, all that 
heard him agreed, spoke no word that could be improved by 
the use of another, Mr. Webster's great power was in his 
almost infallible logic; in his earnestness of manner, and his 
clear distinct enunciation, and his deep, mellow voice. 

Every country or government of distinction in history has 
had separate periods that were so different that they have 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 79 

been known by appropriate names. Greece had her heroic 
age and her golden age under Pericles. Rome had her colonial, 
her conquering and heroic age, and then her golden age under 
Augustus. Our Government had first its moral and patriotic 
age, next her combative, intellectual age, and last her age of 
lawlessness, greed, graft and immorality. To be explicit I will 
add that, for about a quarter-century after the Revolution, the 
electorate chose their public servants for their personal honor, 
patriotism and fidelity, and not for intellectual ability. They 
preferred an honest common-place to a brilliant knave. But 
this decision was greatly modified by the constant agitation 
by the Abolitionists that grew worse every year, who pelted 
Congress every December with petitions demanding the aboli- 
tion of slavery — an act not within the power of Congress to 
do, as those fanatics were told a thousand times without abat- 
ing their insane conduct a minute or a line. This quarter-cen- 
tury was around the year 1810. Soon the war of 1812 was 
brewing, and the refusal of Massachusetts and other New Eng- 
land States to honor President Madison's call for troops in- 
tensified the sectional feeling the fanatical Abolitionists had 
been inflaming for twenty years. It was about this period 
when the voters, North and South, began to think more of 
ability in their Congressmen. At this time New Hampshire 
discovered Daniel Webster and sent him to Congress ; then he 
moved to Boston and she sent him to Congress and kept him 
in the Senate until 1841. In 1816 the tariff loomed up with 
portentous proportions. In 1820 a new danger to the Repub- 
lic alarmed all patriots when the Missouri Compromise had 
to be adopted by Congress — that admittedly had nc iurisdie- 
tion over the question involved — to insure the public peace. 

So far we have been looking at Mr. Webster's strength. 
That justice may be done and history not be made to speak 
falsely, we must note his weaknesses. He had some venial 
faults, some very grievous. The venial are the common heri- 
tage of mankind and we need not dwell on them, but it is the 
duty of all dealing with biography to bring to light the faults 
as well as the virtues of those of whom they write. Biography 
has a twofold purpose; one is to encourage and to stimulate 
coming generations to pursue virtue, and the other is to warn 



80 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

them to shun vice. While I am not writing biography, there 
are certain qualities and conduct of Mr. Webster that lie 
directly in the path I am on, and cannot be avoided. With his 
admirers and extollers at the North, Mr, Webster for thirty 
years, ending March 7th, 1850, was Ajax carrying, supporting 
and defending single-handed the Constitution and the Union, 
and was held aloft above all Southern men as a model for 
youth and manhood. He was Sir Oracle, Priest, and Prophet; 
he was infallible. I have shown that he was a descendant 
through many generations of the rough, uncouth, thorny Puri- 
tan stock. Although he was built on too large a, scale intellec- 
tually to tolerate the Puritan's superstitions and ungodly re- 
ligion, yet he did not escape the social uncouthness inherent to 
Puritanism. It was his environment ; it stuck to him under all 
the refinements, etiquette and courtesies of Washington society. 
While Secretary of State, when ladies called on business to 
see him, he did not offer a chair, but kept them standing. He 
was gentle by nature, but the Puritan rough bark was never 
rubbed off nor smoothed down. One of his grievous faults 
was insensibility to the obligation of debt. By consensus of all 
civilized and semi-barbarous peoples, this fault is one of the 
worst; for, although not criminal, there is no grade of offense 
that lies between it and cheating and swindling; so close are 
they that, to avoid one the offender must move into the other. 
This moral insensibility envelops ingratitude, selfishness and 
indifference to the legal rights, comfort, pleasures and welfare 
of creditors and their families. 

An incident in the life of Mr. Webster has been repeated 
in a journal within a few months past. It was this: "Henry 
Clay, who was of the same breed of debtor, but not a 
thoroughbred like Mr. Webster, went to Riggs's Bank in AVash- 
ington to get a loan on his own note of $250.00. He was told 
that by the rules of the bank he must get an endorser. He 
asked Webster to endorse, who gladly agreed to "oblige his 
friend." "By the way. Clay, I want $250.00 right now. Can't 
you make the note for $500.00?" "Certainly!" said Mr. Clay, 
"glad to help you out." The note was made for $500.00, and 
the bank lent the money and holds the note now "in memory 
of the deceased." Mr. Webster was always careless with 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 81 

money. He, on one occasion, had read a law report he wished 
to use before a court. He desired to mark the page ; there was 
no loose paper near, and after looking around him, he felt in 
his vest pocket, took out a $5.00 bill and put it at the page. 
It turned out that he did not use the decision, and the bill re- 
mained in the book and was found after many years. 

There are those who do not consider this indifference to 
debt a very great deficiency in Mr. Webster's character. This 
is because they are deficient in the same spot. Every com- 
munity has Dick Swivellers whose debts make of them cowards 
and they avoid certain streets in order to dodge their credi- 
tors; also Harold Skimpoles who have no sense of the value 
of monej^ Mr. "Webster was not driven into other streets, like 
Dick Swiveller, to dodge creditors, as he received in fees large 
sums, but, like little Harold Skimpole, he did not know the 
value of money, and could not keep it. He must have been a 
Mr. Micawber in the flesh in one respect. When Mr. Micawber 
signed one of his hundreds of promissory notes in the shape of 
"I. 0. U.," he would exclaim with a feeling of great relief — 
"Thank God! that debt is paid." What would this world be, 
if, when it started out on its pilgrimage thousands of years 
ago, all men had no more regard for their "promise to. pay" 
than had Daniel Webster? The human family would probably 
be squatted like the Chaldeans, or their distant forbears, on 
the plains of Shinar, swapping kids and lambs, bullocks and 
heifers, for food, and skins for wear, and thousands of un- 
happy debtors would never have been oppressed by "where- 
ases" followed by "fieri faciases" and then by "scire faciases" 
that served as unsolicited letters of introduction to high 
officials dwelling within gloomy walls and behind iron 
doors. There could have been no credit and no progress, for 
credit, like faith, removes mountains. This is but the physical 
aspect of the world. What the effect on the morality of men 
would have been, even the imagination icannot portray. But, 
unfortunate as was this indifference to monetary obligations, 
it led to other and far more reprehensible conduct of Mr. Web- 
ster. This requires a few introductory remarks: 

I have said that Mr. Webster entered Congress in 1812, 
New Hampshire, his native State, sent him. After serving two 



82 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

terms he moved to Boston, and in 1823 Boston adopted him 
and sent him to the House of Congress, and in 1827 Massa- 
chusetts sent him to the Senate. He had become a recognized 
national force by his triumph in the case of Dartmouth Col- 
lege — where he captured the full Bench of the United States 
Supreme Court and bore it away as easily as Samson carried 
away the gate of Gaza. I have not dwelt thus long on Mr. 
Webster's venial and reprehensible weakness with the slightest 
pleasure, or feeling of gratification. On the contrary, viewing 
this side of one of America's strongest intellects has filled me 
with deep regret. It is like looking at Achilles in full armor 
holding his magic shield, while the mind's eye dwells on his 
vulnerable and fatal heel, or, when we are lost in admiration 
of the wisdom of Lord Bacon, some vagrant thoughts will 
steal away and we detect them glancing at the great Lord 
Chancellor as he sells justice on the woolsack. In my boyhood 
I declaimed with pride: "Venerable men! you have come 
down to us from a former generation. Heaven has boun- 
teously lengthened out your lives that you might see the light 
of this glorious day — ," and many others of those gorgeous 
Websterian fabrics, strong and beautiful, so elaborately re- 
vised and polished again and again, that they resemble the rich 
and rare oriental tapestry woven at the cost and sacrifice of 
human life. 

I have never understood why Mr. Webster, in his eulogy 
on Jefferson and John Adams, delivered as a part of his ad- 
dress an imaginary speech as made by Adams in the Continent- 
al Congress, and silently allowed it to be printed and spread 
over the United States as actually delivered by John Adams. 
Every compilation of extracts from speeches of our great ora- 
tors for declamation in schools, contains the speech beginning : 
"Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand 
and my heart to this vote!" The occasion was sublimely sol- 
emn. The lives of the two men, Jefferson and Adams, were 
deserving all that any orator could bring to place on their 
brows as a crown of glory; and nothing but the strictest 
conformity to truth and history was permissible. But the 
orator trifled with his audience by fabricating a patriot's and 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 83 

an orator's glowing words, and by introducing Adams as the 
patriot and orator. 

I say I have never understood why this trick was played, 
but I have a theory, which, in the absence of a better, may be 
worthy of acceptance. This address was delivered in 1826 in 
Faneuil Hall. The men to be eulogized were antipodal — Jef- 
ferson, Southern; Adams, Northern; Jefferson, a Cavalier; 
Adams, a Puritan; Jefferson, a Virginian; Adams, a typical 
product of New England — bigoted, narrow and uncivil. As 
an instance of this — when Jefferson, his successor in the presi- 
dency, was to be inaugurated, Adams was so uncivilized and ill- 
bred that he refused to meet Jefferson, or to attend his inaugu- 
ration, and hurried away from the Capital the minute his term 
of office expired, 

Mr. Webster knew both subjects of his eulogy. He knew 
Adams intimately, and knew his inferiority to Jefferson. His 
task was not easy, for, addressing a New England audience he 
could not afford to do otherwise than to try to elevate the 
Puritan approximately to the lofty height of the Cavalier. He 
leould not "tear angels down," so he attempted '*to raise" a 
very mortal ''mortal to the skies." To do this he resorted to 
the ruse of exploiting Adams as a great orator, knowing Jef- 
ferson was not; and as he could not produce, cite, or quote 
any great speech of Adams, and as the country knew that the 
speeches in the Congress never passed beyond the walls of 
the building, Mr. Webster hit on the device of having obtained, 
in some way, a speech that Adams delivered during the secret 
debate. It may be that Adams had practiced a pious fraud 
on Mr. Webster at some moment of convivial confidence, by 
giving him, under pledge of secrecy, a copy of a speech he 
asserted he made in the Congress, and Mr. Webster dressed 
it in a suit of his Sunday clothes for its introduction to Faneuil 
Hall. And as Mr. Webster leould not tell how he got it, and 
also knew that, should he tell, Adams would be denounced as 
a liar far and wide, Mr. Webster introduced the speech with 
the following ambiguous verbiage: 

"Hancock presides over the solemn sitting; and one of 
those not yet prepared to pronounce for absolute independence 
is on the floor, and is urging his reasons for dissenting from 



84 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

the declaration: 'Let us pause. This step once taken can not 
be retraced,' " etc., etc. As Mr. Webster's biographers say 
that he always revised and pruned severely every speech of 
importance, it may be that the above introduction was not what 
Mr. "Webster spoke, but is what he afterwards wrote for pub- 
lication. President Fillmore asked Mr. Webster what author- 
ity he had for putting that speech into the mouth of John 
Adams. ''None, except Mr. Adams's general character. I will 
tell you what is not generally known. I wrote that speech one 
morning before breakfast in my library, and when it was 
finished my paper was wet with tears." 

It will be noticed in Mr, Webster's eulogy that he first 
created a very timid patriot — one who let "I dare not" 
wait upon "I would;" who held the dagger over the heart 
of the old tyrant king, but was too cowardly to strike — and 
stood him up, quaking, to drivel out his fears to the Conven- 
tion, and then made his New England hero cry — "Give me 
the dagger!", and thrill his pallid compatriots with a grand 
oration, opening with a double tautology — "Sink or swim, 
live or die, survive or perish, I give my heart and my hand 
to this vote," (composed by Mr. Webster A. D. 1826, one 
morning before breakfast, in his library) so eloquently 
that, thirty-eight years after the imaginary orator closed 
with the opening tautology, Mr, Webster shed tears so 
copiously as to wet the paper he wrote this imaginary hero's 
imaginary oration on. If another edition of D 'Israeli's Curiosi- 
ties of Literature should ever be issued, its richest and rarest 
gem would be the story of John Adams's greatest oration, that 
drew tears from New England's greatest orator while 
he was composing it thirty-eight years after the only occasion, 
when it might have been delivered, had passed. After Mr. 
Webster had wept profusely over Adams's imaginary speech, 
composed by Webster himself, he exclaimed in his eulogj' — 
"And so shall that day be honored, illustrious Prophet and 
Patriot! So that day shall be honored!"' — the audience not 
dreaming that Mr. Webster was the "illustrious Prophet and 
Patriot." 

The old saw — "there are tricks -in all trades but ours," is 
recalled by this interpolation of an imaginary speech. If the 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 85 

purpose was to exalt Adams above Jefferson, it was, no doubt, 
successful with a New England audience. The speaker was 
the proudest champion of that group of States, and in his 
heart they overlay all other States in the Union. He knew 
their weaknesses, and that the Union was of greater value to 
them in dollars and cents than to the Southern States, and his 
devotion to the Union was largely fostered by that knowledge. 
As slight evidence of this first love, as well as of Mr. Webster's 
intention to enhance the glory of John Adams, even the casual 
reader of this address and eulogy observes that he eulogizes 
Hancock, President of the Congress, and Samuel Adams and 
Elbridge Gerry and Robert Treat Paine, all colleagues of John 
Adams in that Confess, and he says not a word of the six 
colleagues of Jefferson. Why devote a page to these Puritans 
and ignore the more distinguished and abler Cavaliers? 



CHAPTER Xm. 

WEBSTER AS STATESMAN AND PATRIOT. 

I shall now consider Mr. Webster as a statesman and 
patriot. Why I link the two will appear as I proceed. As a 
master of the science of political government, (if it may be 
properly called a science), he probably had no superior in this 
(country, excepting Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and 
John C. Calhoun. As the rich nugget found on the surface 
indicates the wealth of gold beneath, every speech of Mr. Web- 
ster's suggests the vastness of his resources lying in reserve. 

There was one occasion — the greatest in his eventful career 
— when he sank the statesman and the patriot in the partisan 
and lawyer. It was when he replied to Robert Y. Hayne in 
the Senate, January 26th, 1830. That speech is the corner- 
stone on which the height of his massive fame now rests. He 
was then in the vigor, mental and physical, of his mature man- 
hood — being forty-eight years of age. He had won national 
fame by his argument in the case of the Dartmouth College vs. 
Woodward in 1818. He had enraptured the Old, as well as 
the New World, by his philanthropic sentiments expressed in 
his "Plymouth Oration, December 22nd, 1820." He had gained 
distinction by his speech on "The Greek Revolution" in the 
House of Congress, January 19th, 1824. He had arrested the 
attention and the labors of the busy sons of a second genera- 
tion, to hear a recital of the heroic deeds and sacrifices of their 
sires, by his oration at the base of Bunker Hill Monument. In 
another field of thought which he enriched and adorned, he 
had delivered his eulogy on Jefferson and Adams, July 4th, 
1826. When he rose to reply to Hayne he had a reputation 
as an orator and as a statesman, and master of our federal con- 
stitution, that surpassed that of all other Americans. To sus- 
tain this high and enviable reputation; to hold the belt he 
wore as champion in America ; to win other and greater laurels ; 
was a temptation that few, if any, mortals could resist. Un- 
fortunately, Mr. Webster, ingrafted with many frailties, was 



T RUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 87 

not one of the strong and noble few. He struck not the rock 
that healing waters might flow. He struck for personal vic- 
tory without counting the cost. He was blinded by the glitter 
that shines afar from the temple of Fame, and could not see 
that in thrusting at the antagonist before him he was stabbing 
his beloved mother — his country. Like Hamlet, who with his 
rapier rent the arras to reach — as he thought — the King, but 
killed Polonius, he with his Damascus blade cut dovm the Con- 
stitution to conquer his adversary. 

But there was another, and, if possible, a stronger motive 
impelling Mr. Webster to enter the lists for victory. From 
1828 to 1830, inclusive, the whole country was more violently 
excited than at any other period before the debate on slavery 
in 1850. The Puritans were aroused again, by religious 
fanaticism in the form of the immorality and sin of slavery, 
and by avarice that was fattening on Protection. The two sec- 
tions — the North and the South — had drawn the line (Mason's 
and Dixon's) and were in hostile array. Each, for ten years, 
had been marshalling its intellectual giants at Washington 
for the combat. The front of each of the forces was uncovered 
in 1820 when the struggle over the admission of Missouri as 
a State was on. The negro slave was the casus belli. The 
battle raged furiously for months, and peace was not declared 
until a truce was agreed on in the form of a compromise. Still, 
the Puritans, while baffled for the time, sullenly retired with 
the avowed purpose to agitate freedom of slaves by Congress. 
The Compromise left the other Puritan vice — avarice — in full 
play, and a new Tariff Bill for Protection was passed in 1824, 
and still another, with greatly advanced oppressive rates, in 
1828, that shocked the entire country except New England, 
South Carolina was aroused to such a degree of protest that 
she inaugurated the movement known as "Nullification." 
Senator Hayne, speaking for South Carolina, attacked the eco- 
nomic policy embodied in the statute of 1828, and Webster, as 
the paid counsel for the factories had to defend the statute. 
Minor debates occurred in the Senate during 1828 and 1829 on 
the injustice and sectional advantages of the law. Several 
passages took place between the two champions on whom the 
final struggle devolved in January, 1830. 



88 TRUE VINDICATION 0¥ THE SOUTH 

Just here it is opportune to notice the oft repeated boast 
by Webster's admirers and bolsterers that the debate was 
sprung on him by Hayne as a surprise, and that he replied with 
the preparation of only one night. A more palpable, open, 
barefaced fraud was never worked up and palmed off on a 
trusting public, or a blind beggar. Every step in the life of 
Mr. "Webster puts this Munchausen romance — this Canterbury 
tale — this braggart's subterfuge — this co.ck and bull story — 
to shame. 

FIRST : Mr. Webster's chief study, from the time he entered 
Mr. Thompson's office as a student of law, was the federal 
Constitution. It was his primer, his vade mecum, his Bible. 
He was not a great lawyer. Innumerable instances are given 
of his application to Judge Story and other great jurists for 
the law he desired in cases he had to try. But he adored the 
Constitution. He pored over it year by year, and no man 
understood it better, if as well. 

SECOND : Mr. Webster made a special study for two years 
of the question of Nullification and Secession before his final 
debate with Hayne. Secession was not a new question. It 
was as old as the ordinances of New York and Virginia adopt- 
ing or agreeing to the Constitution. It reappeared in Ken- 
tucky by her Resolutions of 1798. It was again emphasized by 
Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts in a speech in Congress in 
1811. It was in the air — buzzing around the head of Mr. Web- 
ster — in New England for thirty years before the debate in 
1830. The Hartford Convention revived it. It was the ulti- 
mate remedy advocated by the Puritan abolitionists by which 
New England could escape from all responsibility for the un- 
pardonable sin of negro slavery which she had fastened on the 
South. It was advocated openly by these supersensitive saints 
who proposed to organize New England into a separate repub- 
lic. Was Mr. Webster deaf from 1798 to 1830 ? Hugging the 
Constitution to his bosom as a palladium, did he fail to hear 
the ominous sound of Secession that was the alphabet of New 
England for young and old? Did it shock him? Did it arouse 
him to action? Did he rise in his majesty, as in his perora- 
tion in reply to Hayne, and rebuke with anathemas the Puri- 
tan Secessionists, and ask, "What is all this worth?" 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 89 

THIRD: Mr. Webster knew in 1827 that the question of 
Nullification was agitated in South Carolina and that a debate 
on it must occur in Congress. He knew; that Secession was 
being considered in New England, and that it was considered 
feasible and probable, if Nullification should not be a remedy. 
Can any man honestly believe that Mr. Webster was not pre- 
paring for the part he must take in a debate involving the life 
of the Union, which he professed to love as his mother? Was 
he idle for the two years preceeding the debate in 1830? To 
suppose it is to do him a great injustice and to deny the well 
known method he always employed as a speaker, which was 
not only to prepare carefully and write in full what he would 
deliver, bvit to write and rewrite the manuscript after the 
delivery. Would he fail to be preparing for the most im- 
portant combat in his life? It is not honest to think so, and 
it is not truthful to say that his reply to Hayne was extempore, 
or not thoroughly prepared. 

FOURTH : Mr. Webster did not believe in oratorical genius. 
He had no confidence in anything but labor, and he made that 
his genius. He said, when talking on this subject, that his sen- 
tence (speaking of Great Britain) : "Whose morning drum- 
beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, 
circles the earth with one contin.uous and unbroken strain of 
the martial airs of England," was suggested to him when view- 
ing a military parade at Montreal, and that it required much 
thought, at different times, to construct and polish the sentence. 
It is affirmed by the biographer of Mr. Hayne, Mr. Jervey, of 
Charleston, S. C, that Mr. Webster did not cease to polish his 
reply to Hayne for eleven years after its delivery. 

There is a tradition coming down from the age of Plato 
that a continent lying between Europe and America called 
"Atlantis" was sunk many milleniums ago in some total con- 
vulsion of the earth, carrying down a very cruel and bloody 
people. There is a continent of New England's enormous his- 
tory that without any seismic disturbance, but by conspiracy 
among her Puritan sons, direct and collateral, has been studi- 
ously and laboriously smothered and concealed for near three 
hundred years. It is of a people bloody and cruel like the 
Atlantise, with the added superlative of religious fanaticism 



90 TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 

and insatiable avarice. It is a very small portion of this sub- 
merged history that her great giant, Daniel Webster, was sup- 
ported, in part, by men who battened on tariffs for Protection. 
For near fifty years his many biographers, among them George 
Ticknor Curtis, Harvey, Edward Everett, C. H. Van Tyne, 
March and Plumer, as they wrote, have sat on the trap door 
that covers this Puritan scandal and corruption. Senator 
Lodge in his brief story of Mr. Webster lifted the trap quite 
enough for the public to catch the odor, but not enough for 
the eye to be seared. 

The men enjoying the benefits of Protection kept Mr. Web- 
ster in public life to serve them by his great ability. This thing 
was not done in a corner, nor behind the door. It was an 
agreement. Mr, Webster made money at the Bar, but he had 
no sense of economy. He spent lavishly, was always embar- 
rassed by debt and haunted by debtors, and to keep him in 
Congress he was paid to look after the interest of the protected 
classes. There were forty (40) men who subscribed to an 
agreement to pay him a pension so long as he served them in 
the Senate. This fact is at last frankly stated by Sidney 
George Fisher, Litt. D. & L. L. D., in his biography, ''The True 
Daniel Webster," published in 1911, page 488. Thus Webster 
was the distinguished forerunner of Senator Piatt of New 
York and many hundred insignificant successors strung along 
from New England to Oregon, all ab'ove the Ohio River — ex- 
cept a few carpet-baggers, fetid scabs sloughed from social 
putresence, who, after 1865, were set up like tenpins by the 
Protection Pensioners in the Senate to answer roll call. And 
this merchandise waa called Senators, and is called Senators. 

This political debauchery — buying and owning a special at- 
torney, dressing him in the white toga of a U. S. Senator — 
the passport of statesmen and patriots ; this relation of lawyer 
and client imposed on the lawyer an obligation to serve his 
client to the utmost of his ability. It was the raost insidious, 
dangerous and effective form of treason a government has ever 
encountered. Insidious, because it was the spirit that disrupts 
every social bond known to the human race; dangerous, be- 
cause it cannot be seen and combated ; effective, because it de- 
stroys every agency on which a government must rely for its 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 91 

preservation — the honor, courage and devotion of its citizens, 
or subjects. There were two overpowering temptations to 
make the speaker forget his country, the first, the desire to 
win the title of victor; the other, was an obligation of honor 
that a lawyer feels to his client who is supporting him. 

Just when, that is, the day, month, or year this corrupt 
coalition was formed is not known and never will be revealed. 
Probably every conspirator is dead. All conspirators at first 
are timid because they know not whom it is safe to approach. 
The common knowledge of human nature suggests that the 
ruin was wrought by gradual approaches, as sappers and 
miners work underground. It may have been accomplished 
by the artful advances of the seducer. The entering wedge 
employed was evidently the weakness of the victim as an 
economist; as a debtor in distress because of his uncontrollable 
extravagance. It may have been accomplished as those Puri- 
tan bribers' descendants now manage their Trusts — "by a 
wink," "a nod," or a figure or a label on each conspirator 
with a letter of the alphabet, as **A" stands for Armour, "B" 
for Swift, "C" for Cudahy, or "a verbal understanding among 
gentlemen." (?) We know that Mr. Webster entered Con- 
gress inclined to free trade; that he gradually changed until 
he favored Protection before 1828, and the debate under re- 
view was in January, 1830. We know he was then past middle 
life, that he had been master of Marshfield years before the 
debate ; that he had stocked his farm with the most costly cat- 
tle, sheep and horses, and that the farm was quicksand for 
sinking money. It would throw light on this national scandal 
could we know the date of the paper signed by the forty seduc- 
ers, if indeed, seduction was necessary. 

As this review of Mr. Webster — the ma gnus Apollo of all 
New England's sons — is in part an answer to her continued, 
constant assumption and boast in books, speeches, magazines, 
daily, weekly and monthly journals, of her immeasurable super- 
iority in intellect, religion, morality, virtue, intelligence, cul- 
ture, manners, ethics and all else that pertains to civilized 
people, I will conclude this point of view by saying that he 
would have been a reckless and a desperate man who would 
have dared to suggest to Calhoun, Hayne, Forsyth, Crawford, 



92 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Toombs, Stephens, or any other of the South 's thousands of 
public men, that he should remain in Congress on private pay 
to advocate the interests of any man, or privileged class, 
against the interests of the common country. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

MR. WEBSTER'S MORAL ATTITUDE 
CONSIDERED. 

Let us look at Mr. Webster's moral attitude when he was 
preparing his reply to Hayne. The gravemen of the contro- 
versy was the High Protective Tariff of 1828. He was then 
the paid counsel and advocate of the reapers of riches from 
that ravenous monster. When its head, with destructive 
aspect, appeared in the East, he heard the alarm sounded in 
the South of danger to the Union. He knew that disunion 
was death to this vampire that was sucking the blood of all 
except his clients. Nullification was the dreadful note. He 
knew that every Southern State, except South Carolina, dis- 
approved of her remedy. Therefore, he knew he was on solid 
ground in attacking Nullification, But, he also knew that 
Secession was a national doctrine. It had been asserted by 
Virginia, New York and Kentucky; in Rawle's Text Book at 
West Point, and advocated a thousand times by New England 
statesmen, orators, preachers, speaking singly and in a number 
of conventions. It was a remedy as variant from Nullification 
as the withdrawal of a number of church members from a 
large congregation is from burning the church and scattering 
the entire number among other denominations; as when, for 
instance, in 1844 the Southern portion of the Methodists with- 
drew or seceded from the United Church of the entire Union, 
because the Northern members used their strength and ex- 
pelled Bishop Andrew of Georgia because his wife owned 
slaves she had inherited and held in her own right. 

Mr. Webster, while his mighty brain was revolving the 
multiform issue, discovered without debate that the death 
blow he might deal to Nullification would still leave intact, 
unhurt and available the remedy of Secession, which his own 
clients not only conceded as constitutional, but had advocated 
so often that it was, so to speak, the political alphabet of New 



94 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

England. He saw, of course, that Secession, while not so disas- 
trous to the beneficiaries of Protection, would cripple them 
badly, as they would have only about half the impotent sub- 
jects to prey on. His only course, therefore, was to defy pub- 
lic sentiment. North and South, to over-ride for their benefit 
(as counsel sometimes have to do) the opinions of his own 
clients and constituents; to push aside the Constitution that 
contained no inhibition except what was expressed in lan- 
guage so plain that he who runs may read and understand ; to 
seize Secession without warrant or authority of law and charge 
it as being as vile a traitor as Nullification that proposed to 
stay in the Union and to defy its laws ; and to sack and drown 
the two together; and while hugging to his palpitating bosom 
the assaulted Union, to arouse the sympathy of the jury and 
obtain a verdict by such ravishing sophistry, and his clients 
would then be left with free hands and an open field to continue 
their plunder of the public to the verge of Revolution, which 
they are now rapidly approaching. He could then say as 
Brutus to the co-conspirators — ''Now let high-spirited tyranny 
reign on" — tyranny of numbers — tyranny of factories over 
the fields — ^of Puritan greed over a burdened and weary con- 
tinent ; tyranny of usurpation of power not named in the bond — 
in the compact, or contract, called the Constitution. 

Mr. Tefft (compiler of Webster's eleven greatest speeches) 
reaffirms the stale discredited tradition that the reply to Hayne 
"was nearly extemporaneous." Webster* had studied the Con- 
stitution until he knew it by heart. This study ran through 
thirty years. He had reflected on the question of Secession 
just as long, simply because New England did not allow him 
to escape it. In 1828 Secession passed from a theory to an 
urgent practical issue to be met and decided. It was forced 
to the front by threat of Nullification. Here was Webster's 
stamping ground, soon to be a battle-field. He treated the two 
as twin-monsters. The Constitution was his own great pet 
specialty. He was attorney for clients who, he knew, would 
demand all the powers of his intellect, as their all was staked 
on the issue. His national reputation as "The Great Expounder 
of the Constitution" wasi to be maintained. As he always pre- 
pared thoughtfully and critically every speech when time al- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 95 

lowed, did he, in the most momentous hour of his life, go fish- 
ing and hunting, or dawdle at Marshfield among his pets — 
cattle and sheep? Did the rhetorician, who was such a sleep- 
less guard over his fame as a faultless verbalist, as to rehearse 
by words, gesture and pose his Bunker Hill address while 
standing in a brook fishing for trout, neglect to prepare for 
^the greatest occasion of his life, when defeat would be a Water- 
loo to him and his purse, his clients and New England, fol- 
lowed for him by a St. Helena? ''Tell it not in Gath; preach 
it not on the streets of Ascalon" or any other town or hamlet 
outside the sacred soil of New England. I do not say sacred 
because it has been made holy as the sepulchre of so many 
martyred Quakers and noble women and innocent children 
butchered as witches, but because the dwellers thereon rever- 
ence it as sacred. I spoke of the tradition as stale. Let me 
rather, say, an enchanting fable for children everywhere ex- 
cept those of his credulous old mother. New England, and 
onlj'- with them and her because it is "impossible." Said an 
agnostic, speaking of miracles, "The thing is impossible, and, 
therefore, I believe it." 

Mr. Webster, like Macaulay, was widely noted for his ten- 
acious memory. Macaulay going from Dover to Havre one 
stormy night, being unable to sleep, sat on the deck alone and 
entertained himself by repeating Paradise Lost. Mr. Webster, 
after arranging his thoughts for an address, however lengthy, 
without reducing them to writing, could deliver them as ar- 
ranged without breaking the connection, or gamboling from 
the text. He had conned his reply to Hayne until he was as 
familiar with every paragraph, sentence and word as he was 
with Pope's "Essay on Man," which he could repeat in full. 
He had chosen his vantage ground and had planned the battle 
and was resting for months for the enemy to appear. In the 
words of Senator Benton he had been "lying in waiting for 
the hour to be delivered." His points of attack were selected 
with the skill of the incomparable Corsican, or of the immortal 
Lee when he crushed the enemy at Chancellorsville and the 
Wilderness. He had stationed along his extended line at 
selected intervals all the material of war for attack and defense 
with which nature had bounteously provided him, and which 



96 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

laborious art h-ad improved by untiring practice. He had 
drawn on that world-wide arsenal in which is stored every 
perfect weapon that man can use, all fashioned and burnished 
by the greatest artisan ''in the tide of times," who sleeps on 
the bank of the classic Avon. He had timed the moment when 
he would bring into action the light arms of humor, raillery 
and satire; when to open with the thunder of his heavy artil- 
lery; when to frighten his adversary with the bloody ghost of 
Banquo and the quaking figure of the treacherous, traitorous 
new-made Thane of Cawdor — his fancied prototype of the un- 
grateful son who would murder his benefactor and protector, 
the Union — "willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike ;" he had 
planned by artful circumlocution to clothe his adversary in 
the repulsive garb of a propagandist of treason; and then to 
overwhelm him with a crushing blow, not only on Nullifica- 
tion, but on its twin traitor. Secession. For his peroration he 
drew on Lucifer for assistance when he prayed that his "last 
feeble and lingering glance should behold the gorgeous ensign 
of the Republic * * * still full high advanced," 

"Extemporaneous?" "Nearly extemporaneous?" Just 
about as extemporaneous as was the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, or the Constitution of the United States, 

Had Mt. Webster been statesman and patriot on that fate- 
ful day so fruitful of calamity and ruin, the drama cast by 
him, himself the only actor, would not have been staged. He 
could and should have washed his soul of the bribe, and have 
offered himself white and pure as a sacrificial offering to save 
the Union. But, having a giant's strength, he was tempted by 
self-interest and ambition to use it like a giant. In his zeal 
for the Union he wrecked the Constitution, which alone up- 
held the Union. Unwittingly he anointed as both Seer and 
Prophet, the patriarch, and patriot — Patrick Henry — who 
pleaded with his mother, Virginia, not to unite her destiny 
with the Puritans. He demonstrated the wisdom of Senator 
Maclay of Pennsylvania who recorded in his Diary — "I would 
now remark that there is very little candor in New England 
men. My knowledge of their character warrants me in draw- 
ing the conclusion that they will cabal against and endeavor 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 97 

to subvert any government wtich they have not the manage- 
ment of." 

With his flaming blade he wrote into the Constitution 
''Secession is Nullification, and Nullification is Treason." If 
he had done as all great lawyers do — confined his attack to 
the true and only issue, that Nullification is Revolution, and 
on that solid foothold had staid his impetuous steps and sealed 
there his inflammatory lips; had he had the moral courage to 
turn upon his rapacious clients — sons of "the horse-leech" ever 
crying "Give! Give!" — and tell them their greed had 
pressed their victims to the very verge of disunion, and that 
he must turn his back upon them and his face to his plundered 
country and put forth his strength to hold them at bay and 
protect the suffering millions, he would have saved a half 
million of men from being food for powder, and thousands 
food for vultures, and billions sufficient to purchase the United 
Kingdoms and Sovereignties of Europe. 

"Cromwell! I charge thee, fling away ambition! 
By that sin fell the angels ; how can man, then. 
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it? 
Love thyself last * * * 
Corruption wins not more than honesty! 

Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, 
God's and truth's; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell, 
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr!" 

. When the orator rounded off his polished peroration — "Lib- 
erty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable" — the 
unthinking multitude at the North threw their hats in the air 
and shouted "Hosanna! the Union is safe!" They did not 
know the issue on trial. It was not Union nor Disunion. It 
was "THE PEOPLE VERSUS HIGH PROTECTION." 

When the sophist and pensioner, with the sleight oi hand 
of the master of Three Card Monte, slipped Protection off the 
board and substituted Nullification and proclaimed the case to 
be "THE PEOPLE AGAINST NULLIFICATION," and 
changed his Brief from that for the defendant — ^High Protec- 



98 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

tion, to one in favor of the People, and after he had successfully 
convicted Nullification of Treason and then seized and dragged 
in Secession, and by bold, bald assertion, unsupported by reason 
and in defiance of the consensus of opinion. North and South, 
denounced Secession as twin traitor with Nullification, the jury 
rendered its verdict in favor of his clients and almoners. 

When the paid advocate by ipse dixit convinced the jury 
that Secession, like Nullification, was Revolution and could 
not be effected without war, he set bloody treason afoot, and 
laid a train with burning fuse that just thirty years thereafter 
exploded a mine that laid low in death a half million men, 
and made a million cripples and homeless widows and orphans. 

I have said the pensioned pleader set treason afloat. Is this 
rhetoric and no more? Is it a figment of the brain? Let us 
see. 

* * Words are things, and a small drop of ink 
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces 
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think." 

' * Nullification is Revolution ! Revolution is war ! Secession 
is Revolution, therefore Secession is war! When these words 
were read into the Constitution by its "Great Expounder," 
the Northern sesessionists, seeing that avenue closed, changed 
front, joined the abolitionists, and raised the cry — "Slavery 
must be destroyed." As hornets swarm for battle when dis- 
turbed, these conspirators rushed to the field. They flooded 
Congress with petitions. In 1835 37,000 petitioned Congress to 
abolish the twin sister of anarchy. In 1836, 110,000 petitioned. 
In 1838 the number of these patriots whose fathers had coined 
fabulous wealth out of this unpardonable sin, swelled to 500,000, 
and ran into millions before 1860. 

After Webster's speech (1830), abolition societies were 
rapidly organized. In 1836 there were 527. In 1837 the num- 
ber was 1006. In 1838 there were 1346, and there were 155,000 
enrolled members. Soon the children of the Northern States 
were seized with nausea and retching from the sour grapes 
their fathers had eaten so ravenously and waxed obese upon, 
and they assembled and endeavored to get relief, not from the 



TRUE VINDICATION OT THE SOUTH 99 

accumulated fat but from the sin of their fathers, by passing 
statutes to punish any and all who should obey the law of Con- 
gress requiring States to deliver up fugitive slaves. To resist 
a federal law ''The Great Expounder" had told them was 
treason. Patriotic Massachusetts was found among these 
defiers and nullifiers of the law, and her Union loving sons 
soon became mobs to resist and nullify the laws of the Union 
they so much adored. To nullify the High Protective Tariff 
in South Carolina was Kevolution — was treason. To nullify 
the fugitive slave statute in Massachusetts was patriotism, 
philanthropy, was executing the will of God! 



CHAPTER XV. 

REMARKS ON WEBSTER'S REPLY TO 

HAYNE. 

The three speeches by Daniel Webster that wrought incal- 
culable loss and ruin to the people of this country, are his 
argument in the equity case of Dartmouth College vs. "Wood- 
ward, his reply to Robert Y. Hayne in January, 1830, and his 
reply to John C. Calhoun, in February, 1833. It is my pur- 
pose to make good that assertion as to the replies to Hayne and 
Calhoun. The Dartmouth College decision needs no comment. 
It has been a stump in the way of every lawyer of extensive 
practice ever since it was rendered. 

As the two replies were on the same subject — the tariff for 
Protection passed by Congress in 1828 — although delivered 
near three years apart, and as the second (the reply to Cal- 
houn) was but the complement and enlargement of the first, I 
shall notice both together, considering them, in some respects, 
as one. About the only difference in the cause of the debate 
with Hayne in 1830 and with Calhoun in 1833, was that the 
question of Nullification by South Carolina was a theory in 
1830, whereas in 1833 it was an accomplished fact, and the 
Bill ever since known as the Force Bill to coerce South Caro- 
lina into obedience to the statute for Protection, was then pend- 
ing in Congress. Webster's speech in 1833 was in reply to Cal- 
houn's speech against the Force Bill. Calhoun replied to Web- 
ster in an argument on the nature of our dual government that 
has never been answered. Before taking up for discussion 
the views of Mr. Webster, expressed in these two speeches, I 
think it will not be unprofitable to make a few remarks on his 
reply to Hayne. 

The first is that the speech, viewed as a whole, makes the 
impression that Mr. Webster was not enthusiastic in the con- 
viction of the correctness of his position. In Dr. Tefft's com- 
pilation of Webster's eleven greatest speeches and arguments, 
his reply to Hayne fills 91 pages. Of these, 64 pages are filled 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 101 

before he mentions the main issue. He begins on page 64, and 
says : * * This leads us to inquire into the origin of this govern- 
ment and the sources of its power." Of the remaining 27 
pages, more than half are on matters, some historical, that are 
dehors the record; such as, what New England did and did 
not when the embargo law was passed; the second is a waste 
of words in exploiting South Carolina's record on tariff for 
Protection, and the third a short dialogue from his melodrama 
in which he stages the scene in Carolina when the Senator, 
(Hayne), General of the Militia, should meet the federal troops 
in his State ordered there to collect custom duties. The per- 
oration covers two pages. 

It is a significant fact that in the entire 91 pages, the word 
''Nullification" occurs but once, and that the portentous word 
"Secession," familiar to him for thirty years, is not sounded 
at all. The first 64 pages could have been omitted without 
impairing the strength of the speech as an argument. But in 
his reply to Calhoun, three years later. Secession, Revolution, 
Rebellion and Nullification roll along page after page, hand- 
cuffed together as a bloody quartette equally guilty of treason, 
and all fit only for the gallows. Why this change? Mr. Cal- 
houn had not discussed Secession as a remedy for South Caro- 
lina. The word, or the treasonous thing. Secession, was not 
in Mr. Webster's way! But he seized it — an innocent looker- 
on — and dragged it in, damned and hanged it with the other 
traitors, as the entire country looked on in amazement, espec- 
ially New England, where Secession had long been a house- 
hold word, familiar to the ears of the speaker and volunteer 
hangman. 

In the last preceding chapter I gave a few of the sources 
that had made Secession so familiar to Mr, Webster. The 
hustings, the forum, the daily papers, the pulpits, every chan- 
nel of information written, printed and spoken, had been for 
thirty years vocal of Secession. Rev. Wm. E. Channing, New 
England's greatest religious light at that day, and only two 
years older than Webster, wrote of slavery — "We are for 
Union — but not slavery. We will give the Union for the aboli- 
tion of slavery, if nothing else will gain it, but if we cannot 
gain it at all, then the South is welcome to a dissolution — the 



102 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

sooner the better." "What made Mr. "Webster silent on Seces- 
sion in 1830, what made him so violent against it in 1833? 
This cannot be answered in a word, or a sentence. To under- 
stand what occurred we must go back to the time and scene — 
be "a looker-on in Vienna" — and gather up the surrounding 
facts and from them catch the psychology of the moment. To 
do this it is necessary to repeat a few words from the preced- 
ing chapter. From the beginning of the 19th century New 
England had been in a mental and spiritual ferment over 
slavery in the South. That is to say — Puritan religious fanati- 
cism was again in the ascendant. This was shown by Mr. 
Hayne in his speech, and Mr. "Webster admits it by words that 
confess but a small part of the extent of the frenzy. When 
trying to belittle Hayne 's partial array of New England's 
turbulent and threatening writings and speeches against the 
South on account of negro slavery that she — New England — 
had fastened on the South, Mr. Webster said: 

"Why, sir, he (Hayne) has stretched a drag-net over the 
whole surface of perished pamphlets, indiscreet sermons, frothy 
paragraphs and popular addresses; over whatever the pulpit 
in its moments of alarm, the press in its heats and parties in 
their extravagance, have severally thrown off in times of gen- 
eral excitement and violence. He has thus swept together a 
mass of such things as — but that they are now old and cold — 
the public health would have required him rather to leave 
in their state of dispersion. For a good long hour or two 
he recited speeches, pamphlets, addresses, and all the et 
ceteras of the political press, such as warm heads produce in 
warm times." 

Two important facts are made prominent at this point in 
the debate; first, that to suggest Nullification of a statute of 
Congress by South Carolina was treason, and to be treated 
with the utmost severity by the government; and, second, 
that in New England, for more than thirty years, disunion, 
secession, and forming a separate republic had been advocated 
in every possible form and threatened from bar-rooms to pul- 
pits, and New England's greatest statesman, when confronted 
with the facts, and not able to meet them, raised the Puritan 
shield inscribed "I am holier than thou" and endeavored to 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 103 

turn into ridicule any criticism of New England's acts. He 
had known all that Hayne quoted. He had heard it through 
thirty years. He knew the authors were fanatics and danger- 
ous beyond human conjecture. Pie should have denounced 
them as enemies of the Union, and have tried to segregate 
them socially, and thus forestall contamination by association 
and example. Instead of assuming the role of patriot he chose 
to play the part of Pantaloon. 

A statesman pure and undefiled would have admitted the 
enormity of New England's many sins touching slavery, and 
have deplored her punic faith in trying to overthrow the Con- 
stitution she had so recently accepted as her protecting shield. 
The admission could not have weakened his attack on Nullifi- 
cation. But Mr. Webster was not a statesman pure and un- 
defiled. By nature he had been afflicted with the curse of 
Mammon common to the Puritans, and, by bargain and sale, 
the statesman had sold out all his natural endowment and all 
he had acquired to the committee of Forty, who represented 
the protected pensioners of the government huddled together 
mainly in Massachusetts. It must be a great pleasure to those 
who are on watch for coincidences to note that the number 
of thieves (40) who infested the town in Persia in the days 
of All Baba and Morgiana, and owned the cave that opened 
to no other word or agency than the word "Sesame," is the 
exact number (40) of Puritan bribers who bought Webster's 
head and honor by paying him an annual pension so long as 
he was a Senator, The Greeks would explain the coincidence 
by metempsychosis — that the 40 thieves of the twelfth cen- 
tury, in Persia, had reappeared in the 19th century in Boston. 

Mr. Webster seems to have approached the main subject 
of his speech with marked circumspection, and as if held in 
leash by an invisible power. That power was the sentiment 
of New England on the right of a State to secede. He was 
representing her industrial interests in the Senate, and her 
favor was his fortune. He was not decided as to Secession. 
This is shown by the Resolutions drawn by him and adopted 
by the mass meeting at Framingham in 1812 protesting against 
the embargo, and sent as a memorial to President Madison. 



104 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

The part of the Resolutions appropriate to this view, I now 
quote : 

*'We are, sir, from principle and habit, attached to the 
Union of the States. But the attachment is to the substance 
and not to the form. It is to the good which this Union is 
capable of producing, and not to the evil which is suffered 
unnaturally to grow out of it. If the time should ever arrive 
when the Union shall be holden together by nothing but the 
authority of law; when its incorporating vital principle shall 
become extinct; when its principal exercises shall consist of 
acts of power and authority, not of protection and beneficence ; 
when it shall lose the strong bond which it hath hitherto had 
in the public affections; and when, consequently, we shall be 
one, not in interest and mutual regard, but in name and form 
only — we, sir, shall look on that hour as the closing scene of 
our country's prosperity. 

"We shrink from the separation of the States as an event 
fraught with incalculable evils, and it is among the strongest 
objections to the present course of measures that they have, 
in our opinion, a very dangerous and alarming bearing on 
such an event. If a separation of the States ever shall take 
place, it will be on some occasion when one portion of the 
country undertakes to control, to regulate and to sacrifice 
the interests of another; when a small and heated majority 
in the government, taking counsel of their passions and not 
of their reason, contemptuously disregarding the interests and 
perhaps stopping the mouths of a large and respectable minor- 
ity, shall by hasty, rash and runinous measures threaten to de- 
stroy essential rights and lay waste the most important in- 
terests. ' ' 

Mr. Webster wrote the above in 1812. He was then thirty 
years old. With diplomatic circumspection he tells President 
Madison that he and the people of New England may be 
driven, by unjust legislation by Congress, to secede from the 
Union. His use of the word "Separation" has but one mean- 
ing and that is Secession. "We shrink from the separation 
of the States." "If a separation of the States ever should 
take place." 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 105 

The second remark on the reply to Hayne is, that there is 
no record of another speech, ancient or modern, composed of 
such material, by which the speaker won such wealth of fame 
as Webster won by this. It is almost impossible to exagger- 
ate the exceeding weight of glory it massed upon him. He 
was estimated as above comparision, in America, as a debater 
and rhetorician. And those who do not analyze the speech 
and weigh its parts, consider it as Webster's masterpiece. In 
rhetorical finish I think it his best. As an argument it is be- 
low, probably, twenty of his speeches. As evidence of good 
judgment and statesmanship it sinks to the level of the sophist 
and empiric; as in making sport of the speeches, sermons, 
etc., of religious fanatics, produced by Hayne, instead of de- 
ploring their perfidity and admitting their danger, and in 
putting Massachusetts on exhibition as a model, without quali- 
fication, instead of being truthful on her record — the worst 
of any of all the colonies — America's graveyard for mur- 
dered Christians and negro barbarians made slaves by her. 
If Hayne had replied he could have flayed Massachusetts year 
by year for two hundred years, and sent her to Coventry with 
incurable bed-sores purging pestilent pus until the crack of 
doom. 

This speech brought to Webster's name more praise and 
glory than any other he ever delivered. And, yet, the perora- 
tion is the chief pillar that sustains its reputation. Exclude the 
closing page and the magnificence of the speech was facti- 
tious. The entire Union was excited. Not one man and voter 
in fifty knew the meaning of the word ''Tariff." Not one in 
a hundred had ever heard of Tariff for Protection, or under- 
stood it when told of it. The people of all sections were de- 
voted to the Union. Congress to them was a sacrificial assem- 
blage of immaculate and industrious patriots, working for 
the common good and general welfare of all. They were told 
that South Carolina was trying to dissolve the Union, to throw 
everything into chaos, only because Congress, while passing a 
law to raise money to carry on the Government had put too 
much in the Bill. They did not understand what she meant 
by Nullification, nor how she intended to work it. 



106 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Again, all the intelligence of the North favored high Pro- 
tection, because the North got the benefits. The North was 
practically unanimous in support of the law, and the South, 
through ignorance of the real issue, was enlisted in favor of 
the Union. For these reasons, nearly the whole population 
was against the position of South Carolina. The Protection- 
ists, who had the money, sowed every State, county and ham- 
let with printed copies of Webster's speech. Almost every 
teacher of schools in the South was a "Yankee" from New 
England. Each was supplied with a copy of the speech, and 
boys in every school. North and South, declaimed the perora- 
tion that had been so artfully constructed, polished and beau- 
tified, to arouse the sentiment of devotion to the Union. All 
things were in conjunction and apposition to crown "Webster 
as the victor of the day, and as champion of the Union. He 
was not simply the "Great Expounder of the Constitution." 
He was also defender and savior of the Union ! 

New England, through the tariff of 1824 and 1828, had 
just received the most convincing proof of the value to her 
of the Union, and between 1830 and 1833 her opinion on Seces- 
sion underwent a change, and with her change of front we 
see her champion and political vane, pari passu, turning also ; 
that is, between 1830 and 1833 Mr. Webster became an anti- 
secessionist. Whatever may have been the opinion of the paid 
counsel on Secession in 1830, when his clients were undecided, 
or, rather, divided, he readily adopted their changed views of 
Secession in 1833 when he replied to Calhoun. Before 1830 
Secession was the popular medicamentum to purge the North- 
ern conscience of the many and complicated sins of slavery. 
It was before 1830 that all the conventions to propagate Seces- 
sion and the convention to form a New England republic, 
were held. After that year, the kind of literature on the curse 
of slavery that Mr. Hayne produced and quoted, fell off, and 
anti-slavery societies and petitions to Congress, as I have 
shown in the preceding chapter, grew and multiplied in geo- 
metrical ratio. It thus appears that cupidity and high Protec- 
tion stimulated the greed of New England and opened her 
eyes to the incalculable value of the Union to her, and that 
her greed and avarice shifted her remedy from Secession to 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 107 

that of abolition societies, and petitions to Congress praying 
that body to abolish slavery. 

This change of front from Secession, advocated by the 
North, changed and fixed steadfast Webster's opposition to 
Secession, and caused the only substantial difference in the 
reply to Calhoun from the reply to Hayne. That difference 
was in yoking Secession with Kevolution, Rebellion and Nulli- 
fication. But the immensity, the enormity, the far reaching 
stretch of that difference no human thought can estimate, no 
human imagination can encompass. The effort is like that of 
trying to compass within the limits of a thought the distance 
from the earth to a fixed star. It is like the vain imagining 
of what would be the social and geographical condition of 
Europe, and even Asia and Africa, had the dictatorial Empire 
of France over-whelmed the combined kingdoms of Europe 
at Waterloo. We see all around, and we feel and have felt 
for fiity years, the direful effects of that change of one man's 
opinion on Secession between 1830 and 1833. His pronounce- 
ment in reply to Calhoun was received voraciously, yes, "with 
licking of the lips," by the North, The Great Expounder, Sir 
Oracle, had spoken, and settled the long dispute against the 
adherents of Secession. The student of causality finds in the 
words in reply to Calhoun — "Secession means war; there can- 
not be a peaceable Secession" — the vital germ of the war of 
1861-5. 

From the day when those omnious words were pronounced, 
the North incorporated them in its political creed, and Abra- 
ham Lincoln, finding nothing in the Constitution to authorize 
an invasion of one State by another, or by all the others, to 
conquer with a hostile army, adopted the Websterian oracle 
that Secession was Rebellion and Revolution as his plea in 
justification for invading the seceded States with three million 
soldiers, on the pretext of enforcing obedience to federal civil 
laws. 

Mr. Webster's luminous logic could not fail to see the full 
force of Hayne 's indictment based on what he (Webster) 
called the "ass's load" of pamphlets, speeches and sermons 
against the South, but lust for victory, sectional pride, obli- 
gation to his constituents and industrial clientele swept be- 



108 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

tween his vision and his imperiled country, and he changed 
into burlesque-comedy the lowering and fast approaching ele- 
ments of the most brutal tragedy the world has ever looked 
upon. He lived to survive that mental eclipse, and to feel 
by anticipation the ruin awaiting the Union through his 
sophistry and defection to duty, when, as one of the people's 
guardians, he sank his country to serve his greedy clients 
and to gratify his own ambition. And to his credit, it must 
be said, he had the courage to acknowledge his wrong as pub- 
licly as he had committed it, though not in words so explicit 
and clear. But as the most penitent confession of murder 
cannot revive the victim, so this confession, coming twenty 
years after the crime was committed, could not arrest the 
swift footed mischief he had so gayly turned loose; and his 
dying confession did no good for his country, but it worked 
ruin to himself. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

WEBSTER'S REPLY TO CALHOUN 
CONSIDERED. 

I shall now consider more directly the speech of Mr. Web- 
ster in reply to Calhoun. That a clear view of the issue may 
be had, I, at the risk of incurring the reader's displeasure, 
must put in compact form what has been stated in discon- 
nected shape — the history of the situation when this debate 
occurred. I make no apology for this part repetition, because 
this debate was the most important that ever took place in 
the history of the world. By it one man, against the lessons 
of history, against cotemporaneous construction North and 
South for forty years, against the terms of the Constitution 
and against reason, if we consider the intention of the framers 
of the Constitution; by forced construction and by resorting 
to the preamble to the Constitution, wrote into that most 
solemn instrument — every word of which was thrice weighed 
by the ablest statesmen in America before it was accepted — 
the words, "Secession by a State from these United States 
is Rebellion," and thus changed by his single word, the only 
complete republic in all the course of time into a despised 
tyrannical despotism, or mobocracy, or ochlocracy. These are 
not pleonastic words, they are descriptive of a chapter in the 
history of this government. For in the Spring of the year 
1861, Abraham Lincoln, without authority of Congress, the 
only power in this government that can declare and make war, 
invaded the State of Virginia at the head of 75,000 troops 
equipped with all modern appliances for destruction, desola- 
tion and murder. 

The situation at the time of the debate was as follows: 
Congress had passed a number of bills to raise revenue for 
the federal government. In 1816 one was passed that had a 
small addition for what was called protection of a few indus- 
tries. In 1824 this addition was raised so as to give still more 
protection. This aroused strong opposition. In this bill the 
fine hand of New England was visible. She was the favored 



no TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

recipient of the increased revenue. She was the spoiled and 
the pet child in the family. This statute disclosed the pur- 
pose of New England to be supported by the government — a 
purpose that has been persistently urged and carried into 
effect for a hundred years. In 1828 New England came again 
with the plea of infant industries and of guarding America's 
freemen against competition with Europe's paupers and serfs, 
and got a big advance on prior laws for Protection. By this 
time protection had sloughed off its common noun and neuter 
gender and become a distinguished member of the faimily of 
proper nouns, and therefore entitled to an initial capital P, 
which it has worn ever since with high and insolent crest. The 
gender, though not disclosed, may be inferred from the 
thousands of infant industries that have been hatched under 
its hovering wings. 

This greed of New England caused indignation and alarm 
in the South — the strictly agricultural section — and between 
the date of the revenue statutes of 1828 and 1830, South Caro- 
lina, by laws passed by her legislature, proposed to resist the 
enforcement of the revenue law within her borders. This was 
called Nullification. The position assumed by South Carolina 
was that every State, by reason of its sovereignty, had the 
right to question the constitutionality of an Act of Congress, 
and could not be compelled to obey it if she decided it was 
uncon^itutional. This was the ground taken by Senator 
Hayne. Mr. Webster, representing the industrial States, con- 
tended that the Constitution provided a tribunal to decide 
whether an Act of Congress is unconstitutional, and that no 
State had the right to even bring in question the decision of 
that tribunal, which is the Supreme Court of the United 
States. Briefly stated, the above gives the contention that 
was caused by Carolina's threatened Nullification. 

It is not necessary to consider the question whether Nulli- 
fication was and is a remedy under our dual government. I 
say ''was and is" because, if it was a lawful remedy, or means 
of defense by a State, or States, against oppression, at any 
time, it is a lawful remedy today. The letter of the Consti- 
tution has not been changed. Not a word in that instrument 
that was in it then has been touched and not one added to 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 111 

vary its meaning. This is true, also, as to Secession. The 
Constitution, the only pillar that supports the federal govern- 
ment, and the only bond that holds the States together, is 
the same to-day that it was in the beginning and was in 1860. 
The war of 1861-5 did not change the reading of the Constitu- 
tion. The conquest of the South in 1865 left the legality of 
Secession just where it was left by the framers of the Consti- 
tution in 1787. Contracts or compacts are not construed by 
infantry, cavalry and artillery. "War is not a judicial pro- 
ceeding. "War cannot construe a written agreement by which 
Smith delegates authority to Brown, and decide just what 
Brown can do and cannot do under that authority. Civilized 
people do not construe writings by cannon balls, cartridges, 
bayonets and dungeons. It was said after Lee surrendered 
that the war had settled the question of Secession. No lawyer 
said so. No judge worthy to preside in a suit on one of Micaw- 
ber's I. 0. U's uttered such an absurdity simply because one 
man was worn out after a fight for four years with six men. 
No ! The right or the wrong of Secession is as quick and 
active as when New England nourished it forty years as her 
hope of getting away from the corpse of slavery she had bound 
herself and the South with. "Who shall deliver me from the 
body of this death" was her hypocritical cry. What I am 
to consider is Mr. Webster's views of Secession as delivered in 
reply to Calhoun. He submitted four propositions in opposi- 
tion to Calhoun's Resolutions, as expressing his opinion of the 
law of the Constitution forbidding Nullification or Secession. 
The first two were — 

''FIRST: That the Constitution of the United States is 
not a league, confederacy, or compact, between the people of 
the several States in their sovereign capacities; but a govern- 
ment proper, founded on the adoption of the people and creat- 
ing direct relations between itself and individuals." 

"SECOND: That no State authority has power to dissolve 
these relations; that nothing can dissolve them but revolution, 
and that, consequently, there can be no such thing as Secession 
without revolution." 

It is a noteworthy fact that the man who was so careful 
in the selection of words and in nice discrimination, should 



112 TRUE VINDICATION OT THE SOUTH 

use "constitution" and "government" as convertible words. 
The Constitution was a writing — a written suggestion, until 
agreed to — and when agreed to it became a written contract. 
It was and is in no possible sense a government. The Con- 
stitution, per se, has no vitality. It is only the foundation — 
the ground work — on which the parties agreeing to it may 
construct a government. When those parties come together 
and erect the framework — when they elect the officers provided 
for by the agreement, and the officers assume their respective 
places and proceed to perform their duties, then and then 
only is there a government. Mr. Webster was a stickler for 
words, and shades of meaning, and he shied at the word "com^ 
pact." It is not essential what we call the Constitution. It 
is the substance, not the shadow, we must have. He wrote to 
President Madison in the Memorial that has been quoted, 
"Our attachment to the Union is to the substance not to the 
form." The Constitution is an agreement, a consensus, a con- 
tract reduced to writing. This no quibbling can evade. Why 
spend so many sentences to show the Constitution was not a 
compact? Compact has no distinctively inclusive and exclus- 
ive meaning — on the contrary, it has several synonyms. Be- 
sides, Mr. Calhoun caught out the quibbler by quoting the 
words "constitutional compact," used by Webster in his reply 
to Hayne. 

In the same sentence in proposition first, Webster says the 
Constitution is not an agreement between the people of the 
several States in their sovereign capacities. This is asserted 
in the face of the following overwhelming proof of its falsity : 

First: That each colony was acknowledged by Great 
Britain as a separate State and sovereignty. 

Second : That each State sent delegates to Philadelphia 
to constitute the Convention that framed the Constitution. 

Third: That the writing agreed to by those delegates was 
referred back to their respective States that each State, in 
convention assembled, might ratify or reject the writing. 

Fourth : That nine States, each acting independently, 
should agree to or ratify the writing before it should be bind- 
ing on any State. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 113 

Fifth : That any State refusing to agree to or to ratify 
the writing would not be bound thereby. 

Sixth : When the Avriting was received in each State, a 
convention was held in each State, acting separately, and the 
writing was agreed to or ratified by each State, at different 
dates, each acting within its own borders. 

Seventh : That the preamble to the Constitution says it is 
"ordained and established for the United States" — not for 
the people of the United States of America. 

Eighth: That the delegates, headed by George Washing- 
ton, when signing the writing called the Constitution, said: 
"Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the States 
present, etc." 

Ninth : That the tenth amendment of the Constitution 
reads — "The powers not delegated to the United States by 
the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are re- 
served to the States, respectively, or to the people." 

Tenth : Every act required by the Constitution to be done 
to put the Federal government in motion and to keep it mov- 
ing was to be done by the States acting separately. Not a 
single act was or is to be performed by the people of the 
United States acting as and in one body. 

Eleventh: The word "people" occurs but five times in 
the Constitution, and once in the preamble, and it is used 
because the word State or States could not be. Thus — "The 
right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be in- 
fringed." "The right of the people to be secure in their per- 
sons, houses, papers and effects," etc. 

With this array of declarations bristling like bayonets against 
him, he was forced back on the preamble for a weapon of at- 
tack. In one of his speeches, in which the Revolution of '76 
was under review, he said, "We" (the people of the colonies) 
"went to war against a preamble," In this debate he seems 
to have become enamoured with the audacity of our Revolu- 
tionary heroes, and to have taken their success as an augury 
of victory for himself; for he "went to war" with his two 
valiant opponents with the preamble to the Constitution as a 
weapon of attack. And, marvelous to tell, while he was ut- 
terly overwhelmed by the close-knitted logic of Calhoun, he 



114 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

was proclaimed the victor by the protected classes whose hearts 
and hopes of future plunder tv^ere in a consolidated govern- 
ment. 

In his second proposition quoted above, Mr. Webster said, 
"there can be no such thing as Secession without Revolu- 
tion." This leads to the main question I purpose to consider. 
To understand the issue we must look at the political, social 
and economic situation in the United States as it was in the 
year 1830. I mean social to cover the sectional relations and 
the slavery agitation. It is necessary to group some data that 
have been irregularly strewn along these pages, in order to 
understand their significance and importance in arriving at a 
correct judgment. The issue and the only real issue involved 
is the correct construction of the meaning of the United States 
Constitution on the sole question of Secession as a reserved 
right of each of the original thirteen States. 

1. The government in 1830 had been in operation forty- 
one years. 

2. The construction of the Constitution by its framers 
that any State, for justifiable cause, to be decided by it, had 
the reserved right to withdraw from the Union. 

3. The construction by the generation following the fram- 
ers of the Constitution was that any State had that right. 
These two facts were made part of history : 

a. By the ordinance of New York and Virginia when they 
ratified and adopted the United States Constitution; 

b. By the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 
1799, declaring the right of withdrawal or Secession; 

c. The assembly of New England's leading men in Wash- 
ington in 1804 to discuss the advisability of Secession ; 

d. The speech of Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts in Con- 
gress in 1811, advocating Secession; 

e. The Hartford Convention (1814) composed of dele- 
gates from the New England States to consider the advisability 
of Secession on account of the war of which those Stains 
disapproved : 

f. Mr. Webster's declaration in 1812, by and in the quoted 
'Memorial to President Madison, favored separation as a 
remedy ; 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 115 

g. Secession as a remedy taught in Rawle's book on the 
Constitution at West Point Military Academy; 

h. The construction of the Constitution by the entire 
South, from 1789, that peaceable Secession was a right of 
every State; 

i. The construction of the Constitution by the people of 
the North, down to 1833, that peaceable Secession was a right 
of every State; 

j. That Secession as a right was taught in every channel 
of communication, including the pulpits at the North. I have 
already cited the written teaching of Rev. Wm. E. Channing, 
New England's leading abolitionist and theologian. He taught 
prior to 1833. 

k. The statement of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massa- 
chusetts in his "Life of Daniel Webster," page 176. Speak- 
ing of Webster's reply to Hayne, he writes: 

**The weak places in his (Webster's) armor were historical 
in their nature. It was probably necessary, at all events Mr. 
Webster felt it to be so, to argue that the Constitution at the 
outset was not a compact between the States, but a national 
instrument, and to distinguish the cases of Virginia and Ken- 
tucky in 1799, and of New England in 1814 from that of South 
Carolina in 1830. The former point he touched on lightly, the 
latter he discussed ably, eloquently, ingeniously, and at length. 
Unfortunately the facts were against him in both instances! 
When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of States at 
Philadelphia and accepted by the votes of States in popular 
conventions, it is safe to 'say that there was not a man in the 
country, from Washington and Hamilton on one side ('federal- 
ists'), to George Clinton and George Mason on the other side 
('democrats'), who regarded the new system as anything but 
an experiment entered upon by the States and from which 
each and every State had the right peaceably to withdraw; a 
right which was very likely to be exercised. When the Vir- 
ginia and Kentucky Resolutions appeared they were not op- 
posed on constitutional grounds, but on those of expediency 
and of hostility to the revolution they were supposed to em- 
body. Hamilton, and no one knew the Constitution better 
than he, treated them as the beginning of an attempt to change 



116 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

the government. * * * "What is true of 1799 is true of 
the New England leaders in Washington when they discussed 
the feasibility of Secession in 1804 ; of the declaration in favor 
of Secession by Josiah Quincy in Congress a few years later; 
of the resistance of New England during the war of 1812, and 
of the right of 'interposition' set forth by the Hartford Con- 
vention. In all these instances no one troubled himself about 
the constitutional aspect; it was a question of expediency, or 
moral or political right or wrong. * * * 

''When South Carolina began her resistance to the tariff 
of 1830 times had changed, and with them the popular concep- 
tion of the government established by the Constitution. It was 
a much more serious thing to threaten the existence of the 
Federal Government than it had been in 1799, or even in 1814. 
The theory of Nullification had not altered in its essence from 
the bold and brief statement of the Kentucky Resolutions. 
The vast change had come on the other side of the question, 
in the popular idea of the Constitution. ' ' 

Mr. Lodge is, probably, the most congruous and reliable 
authority on this issue that New England could produce. He 
is a scholar, a historian, an American, a New Englander by 
birth and exclusive devotion, a Bostonese, a qualified admirer 
of Daniel Webster and a vociferous eulogist of the Puritans. 
It is important that his statement just quoted shall be remem- 
bered. It is history by a partisan who believes New England 
is as much above the South as old England is superior to Tur- 
key. He is the Senator who made ,the last effort to put the 
Southern whites back again under negro rule, or to put the 
two races on social equality. He is a great-grandson of the 
President of the Hartford Convention, at which Mr. Webster 
held his nose when Hayne produced the record of it in the 
Senate. 

The important facts in Mr. Lodge's statement are: 

1st. That the historical facts were against Mr. Webster's 
contention. 

2nd. That the construction of the Constitution before 1830 
was practically unanimous in favor of the right to secede ; but 

3rd. That in 1830 "times had changed and, with them, the 
popular conception of the government established by the Con- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 117 

stitution. A vast change had come, on the other side of the 
question, in the popular idea of the Constitution." 

Yes, three vast changes had come. Mr. Webster entered 
Congress in 1812 an advocate of Free Trade. Before 1824 he 
changed to a Protectionist. The second change was by New 
England on the tariff. She had become a strong Protectionist. 
The statutes of 1816, 1824 and 1828 demonstrated to her that 
there were millions in "Protection" for her. Presto — came 
the change ! The third change was from advocacy of Seces- 
sion by the North to advocacy of a consolidated Union, or a 
nation, and opposition to Secession, Nullification or any act 
of dismemberment. A solid, indivisible Union was the field 
New England longed to reap. And she has never ceased to 
skin it to this hour. 

On this collect of indisputable facts I submit a few reflec- 
tions. Each colony acting separately selected its wisest men 
and commissioned them to meet in Convention and to draft a 
written constitution to be submitted to the States, severally, 
for approval, or rejection. Mr. Lodge states the historical 
fact that each State, acting alone, chose its delegates, and each 
State, in convention, acting alone, voted to accept or reject. 
The writing thus proposed and agreed to was and is a legal 
document. It is an expression by thirteen sovereigns. It was 
made for but one purpose. That was to appoint a common 
agent to perform for the benefit of each and all the States 
certain acts which can be done by one better than by thirteen. 
To do this service, each principal, being a sovereign, dele- 
gated to the common agent the right to exercise certain pow- 
ers that each, singly, possessed by reason of its sovereignty. 
Not one sovereign attribute or power was surrendered by the 
thirteen States. Each delegated the exercise of certain pow- 
ers. It is an absurdity to say that each State surrendered, 
or gave away certain powers. A sovereign is invested with 
all imaginable governmental powers. The word "sovereign" 
admits no other meaning. Any other signification is impossi- 
ble in the nature of things.. The moment a sovereign parts 
with — gives away irrevocably — one attribute, or power, that 
moment he or it ceases to be sovereign. A part of a whole 
cannot be taken away and the whole still be left intact. The 



118 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

thought alone involves a mathematical absurdity. It is not 
conceivable that the thirteen States intended and deliberately 
plotted to divest themselves of sovereignty, and to raise their 
agent to the exalted position of sovereign over them. Let it 
be supposed, however, that they did so intend. The result ac- 
complished, on this supposition, was the destruction of thir- 
teen sovereignties, and the failure to construct another sover- 
eignty out of their attributes or ruins. In other words, thir- 
teen sovereign States entered into a compact to commit sui- 
cide together — nine to die first and the others to follow, or to 
back out as they should decide, each for itself. 

The words "power" and "powers" as used in the Consti- 
tution, were employed by the wise men who framed that in- 
strument in the sense of "exercise of," as, for instance, that 
"Congress shaU exercise the power to declare war," etc. 



CHAPTER XVn. 

FURTHER DISCUSSION OF THE REPLY 
TO CALHOUN. 

It will throw light on this inquiry to suppose certain propo- 
sitions to have been made during the long deliberations on 
the paper called a "Constitution." Suppose a member of 
that convention had offered the following — "Resolved, that 
each State in conferring the powers enumerated herein on 
the Government that is to exercise said powers, surrenders its 
sovereignty, pro tanto, to said government." 

Suppose the following proposed: "Resolved, that the exer- 
cise of the sovereign powers hereby conferred shall be irre- 
vocably binding on each State, without redress." 

Suppose this proposition had been offered: "Resolved, 
that the only remedy for a minority, in the event the major- 
ity in Congress shall levy heavy duties on imports that enrich 
one section of the Union, or class of citizens, and lays heavy 
burdens on the other sections or citizens, shall be through and 
by Revolution." 

Suppose that this had been proposed: "Resolved, that the 
Union of the States that shall be formed under this Constitu- 
tion shall be forever and inseparable ; and no injustice, by vio- 
lation of any of its provisions, done to a minority of the peo- 
ple by a majority, shall be just cause for Secession, or with- 
drawal of one or more States from the Union, even though 
the injustice be not justifiable by any judicial tribunal; and 
that such withdrawal shall be adjudged revolution and 
treason!" 

Is there a sane man who will say he believes that any one 
of the foregoing supposed Resolutions could have been 
adopted? If so, does he not know that not one State would 
have ratified the work of its delegates, and that there never 
could have been a Union of the States? 



120 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

I have said that one must stand in the year 1830-3 to con- 
sider fairly Mr. Webster's view of the Constitution. I have 
given the general construction, North and South, of the Con- 
stitution before that year, to-wit: that Secession was con- 
ceded to be a peaceable remedy. I have shown that Mr. Web- 
ster so believed in 1812, and no word from his lips shows a 
change of opinion until he replied to Mr. Calhoun in 1833. I 
have shown that even Alexander Hamilton did not question 
the right of withdrawal. 

The feeling that heated the debate was sectional, but the 
issue rose higher than parties or sections. The question was — 
what says the Constitution? If it be silent, what could be 
said or done? Mr. Webster was sitting in the Senate as a 
Judge. He had to construe a legal document. It was a con- 
tract, or an agreement, or a covenant, or a compact, entered 
into by thirteen sovereign States. The instrument contained 
no word about nor allusion to nullification or secession. The 
Judicial mind alone could reflect the light to illumine the text. 
And the rules to guide Judges in construing writings are the 
same in our mother country and in this, and are applied by all 
courts, federal. State, Supreme, and the lowest courts. Briefly, 
they are (1) : That words shall be given the meaning com- 
monly given and understood, except words of the Arts or 
Sciences which must be construed as employed by artists or 
scientists in their technical sense; (2): The meaning of the 
contracting parties must be found and must control; (3) : No. 
word can be read into the writing except it be necessary to 
keep the purpose of the writing from failing; and not at all 
unless the word evidently supplies the meaning of the parties. 
This rule applies to wills and deeds, and also to all classes of 
contracts. 

It is readily seen that not one of the foregoing standard 
rules for construction of all writings applies to the Constitu- 
tion. There is not one ambiguous word in it. There is not a 
word required to make sense and clear meaning. Mr. Web- 
ster had not an ell, nor a barley-corn of ground in the Con- 
stitution to stand on as a base for his replies to Hayne and 
Calhoun. He can nowhere find permission or inhibition as to 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 121 

nullification or secession. As this is a case of delegated author- 
ity, another rule of construction comes in here. It is this : 

In construing any instrument executed by a sovereign, 
delegating the exercise of a sovereign's powers, no construc- 
tion is permissible to enlarge the grant beyond the express, 
plain language contained in the document; because, sover- 
eignty cannot have its attributes abridged by implication. The 
Puritans were constantly claiming powers not named in their 
charter granted by Charles 1st, and that was the source of 
their incessant troubles with their kings and every ruler ex- 
cept Cromwell. This exaction they kept up in every relation 
until 1833, when Webster, speaking for them and as their 
counsel, found fault with the Constitution, and read into it 
what the sovereigns never imagined or thought of. After forty 
years of unanimous construction and general content with 
that view of the federal charter, he, without legal authoritj^, 
and in violation of all rules for construing writings, and after 
he had been driven by Calhoun from the Constitution, on 
which he tried to make a stand, back to the preamble where 
he took refuge in "We the people of the United States," he 
at last resorted to the unauthorized declaration, or ipse dixit, 
that Secession is prohibited and cannot be effected without 
Revolution — without war. 

His construction by implication, applied to the acts of 
sovereigns, is a barbarism in the Law. In other words, it is 
not known; is not recognized by Judges and lawyers. It is 
inferable that, if Mr. Webster had been as able a jurist as 
advocate, and had been a free man, those two speeches would 
not have been delivered. His assumption puts the framers 
of the Constitution and all the other statesmen who discussed 
it by pen and in the thirteen conventions, in the position of 
ignoramuses; that is, they did not know the attributes of 
sovereignty ; or he, by his own reasoning, puts himself in that 
position. But he knew every attribute as well as he knew 
every letter in the alphabet. The truth is that there was no 
dispute, no trouble, no misunderstanding until the protected 
manufacturers appeared on the scene, through their bought 
counsel and advocate, who read words into the Constitution 
to suit their economic aims and interests. A large number 



122 TRUE VINDICATION 0¥ THE SOUTH 

of Northern people whose withers were wrung because their 
fPvthers had stolen and bought negroes in Africa and enslaved 
them, and who were just pious enough to believe and to fear 
that the sins of their fathers would be visited on them, had 
already become dissatisfied with the Constitution because it 
recognized negro slaves as property and made no provision for 
future emancipation. They welcomed any new view of or change 
in the Constitution though it might not even remotely relate 
to slavery. These were the blood-thirsty but timorous scouts 
just in advance of the boisterous line of patriot-martyrs that 
soon appeared bearing a banner with the strange device — 
' ' The Constitution is an agreement with Death and a Covenant 
with Hell." They joined the protected .pensioners in proclaim- 
ing Webster's new Constitution and the entire North soon 
adopted and ratified it. 

I return to the framers of the Constitution. That they 
did not understand their business and duty, was not imagined 
by any one until Mr. Webster called their immortal shades to 
account. He contended that as they did not insert in the 
Constitution in express terms the right to nullify and the right 
to secede, therefore, neither right exists. This position is in 
direct line of descent from the Puritan rule of evidence that 
the old women and young girls when arraigned before Cotton 
Mather's high civil, ecclesiastical and criminal court, on 
charges of being witches, were required to prove they were 
innocent. If they could not, the charge alone was proof posi- 
tive, and they had to die. Thirteen sovereigns, each acting 
through thirteen sets of separate delegates, it was contended, 
must make a positive declaration that the States intended to 
reserve and did reserve the right to nullify or to secede, in 
order to entitle them, or any one or more of them, to exercise 
that right. This reverses the rule of construction that noth- 
ing shall be inferred against a sovereign in construing his 
grant of the exercise of one or more of his powers. 

Let us follow Mr. Webster's contention to its logical con- 
sequences. The Constitution is silent on the right of a State 
to secede, therefore, he says, that right does not exist, not- 
withstanding the tenth amendment thereto reads — "The pow- 
ers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 123 

nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States 
respectively, or to the people." It is sufScient to say that 
the States were in convention in their sovereign capacity, to 
appoint a common agent, and all they had to do was to say 
which of their respective sovereign powers they were willing 
to intrust the agent with the exercise of, and to what extent. 
They were not there to say what the powers and rights of 
each State were. The delegates knew that each State, ex 
vigore termini, was possessed of all powers and rights that 
can belong to a State, or to any monarch, king, emperor, or 
czar. The delegates did agree that certain rights and powers 
of the States should not be exercised by them during the life 
of their agent. They^^ agreed to tie their hands as to a few 
sovereign powers, so as not to interfere with their agent in 
executing the powers entrusted to it. The restraints the States 
laid on themselves are in Section 10 of Article 1 of the Con- 
stitution. The exercise of fifteen powers named in this Sec- 
tion the States surrendered, but nearly all these had already 
been entrusted to their agent, in and by Section 9. 

The first Congress, 1789, proposed ten amendments to the 
States, which were readily adopted. Among them the tenth 
Article is as follows : ' ' The powers not delegated to the 
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to 
the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the 
people." This article was not necessary, for the reason given 
above, viz., the exercise of a sovereign power by another must 
be by express grant and in plain terms. This article was in- 
serted in the Constitution through the extreme caution of the 
people of each State. They were already jealous of the broad 
authority of their agent and they decided to relieve the ques- 
tion of any doubt. No language was ever clearer ; no enuncia- 
tion was ever more positive and determinate. And it was 
spoken by thirteen sovereigns. 

While Nullification was the proximate cause of quarrel in 
1830-3, the real issue was federalism against democracy ; strict 
construction against liberal construction of the Constitution, 
or State-rights against centralization of power in the federal 
government. The seat of federalism from 1787 has been in 
the Eastern States, because the mouth of the government's 



124 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

cornucopia has always poured its ingots over that favored 
territory. 

Mr. Webster, to the manner born and representing the 
favored few in whose pay he was, could not be otherwise than 
"like master like man." With the master the States were 
secondary — only means to the end. The end was and is a 
strong consolidated government. "It was to be the sheaf to 
stand up" and the thirteen States the other sheaves "to stand 
around about and make obeisance to it." 

But such was not the view taken by the deputies of the 
thirteen States, as the whole scheme they planned for a federal 
government plainly shows. They put the government to be 
formed under the Constitution, subservient to the States. The 
rights and powers of the States were watchfully guarded as 
will appear by a brief analysis of the Constitution : 

1st. The erection and operation and continuance of the 
federal government, the deputies, led by Washington, made 
dependent on the will of the States. 

2nd. The three departments, executive, legislative and 
judicial, live or perish, as the States may decide. 

3rd. The States control the franchise. Without this exer- 
cise not a wheel of government can move. 

4th. The voters of each State must choose electors, the 
electors must elect. They must vote in a prescribed form for 
one to be President, for another to be Vice-President, and send 
a certificate of their action to the Presicjent of the U. S. 
Senate. 

5th. Should the voters in the States that have, when com- 
bined, a majority of the presidental electors, decline to choose 
electors, the executive department of the U. S. government 
would be dead. 

6th. The Executive alone can nominate men to the Sen- 
ate to, be Judges of the Supreme Court, the appellate and the 
district courts. So that, if there be no President, there can 
not be a federal Judge, and, of course, there can be no court. 

7th. The voters of each State elect men who compose the 
House of Representatives in Congress. The same voters elect 
members of the State legislature and the latter, in turn, elect 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 125 

U. S. Senators. Without this action by each State, there can- 
not be a Congress, and the third legislative department is 
destroyed. 

The deputies were far-seeing. They did not fail to fore- 
cast the future of the government they were framing the 
material to build. They were not constructing an autonomy 
— a sovereignty — to take the place of the States. They were 
studying to create an agency that could perform certain acts 
for the benefit of the whole, better, in every sense, than the 
thirteen acting separately could perform them. This was the 
scope of their commission, and they did not transgress its 
limit. 

There are four praiseworthy provisions in restriction of 
the exercise of the war-power given by the Constitution. The 
first is that no money shall be appropriated to support an 
army for a period longer than two years j and the second is 
that the right to appoint the officers of the militia and of 
training them was reserved to the States respectively. The 
third is that the President must call on the Governors for 
troops. 

The fourth is: If, in voting for President no person have 
a majority of the electoral votes, and the election must 
be made by the House of Eepresentatives, the vote shall be 
taken by States — each State having but one vote. 

Here we have four distinct proofs of the recognition of 
very important State rights, to-wit: 1st, control of the purse 
in the support of armies ; 2nd, the exclusive right of the gover- 
nors of States to appoint officers of the militia and to drill the 
men; 3rd, the right of the governor to refuse to send troops; 
and, 4th, the right of the smallest State to have an equal voice 
with the greatest in selecting a President. Each of the four 
is an assertion by each State of its sovereignty. 

There is an expression sometimes used by lawyers and 
judges when speaking of the power of the United States, and 
of each State. It is that each is sovereign in its own sphere. 
In my humble opinion the history of the thirteen States and 
of the United States government denies its correctness. That 
each of the thirteen States was sovereign when acknowledged 
by Great Britain no one can question. That the government 



126 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

of the United States is not and never was sovereign is equally 
clear. Sovereignty does not abide in the government — in the 
machinery by which the people transact business, or affairs of 
State. Sovereignty abides in the people — the community — 
who constitute the corporation, or entity, called the State. 
There were thirteen sovereign peoples in North America in 
the year 1787, who, by separate action, at different dates or 
times, in different localities, decided to adopt the Constitu- 
tion and to erect a government in pursuance of its provisions. 
They were the creator, and the government under the Con- 
stitution was their creature, or, of their creation. Now, the 
creature is not the equal of its creator. If the creator were 
sovereign the creature could not be sovereign. If the creature 
were sovereign, it could do all that any sovereign can do. If 
sovereign, it became so by the laying on of hands of its creator. 
But the sovereign States could not impart to the creature a 
part of their sovereignty and remain sovereign. It is the very 
essence of sovereignty that it is a unit — an integer — one and 
indivisible. A sovereign may depute authority to exercise 
one or more of his powers, as is done daily by appointment 
of ambassadors, but the power is still in the sovereign. The 
thirteen States delegated to the U. S. Government the right 
to exercise some of their sovereign powers — nothing more. So 
far were the States from granting to their creature any of 
their sovereign powers, that they expressly provided a plan 
by which, at will, they not only can change, alter, retract, or 
take away any of the authority delegated, but they can by 
vote revoke all authority and destroy their creature. More 
than that, they, as I have shown, by non-action, by refusing 
to elect federal officers, can leave the vaunted sovereign power 
to perish in a night. 

But there is still another view, that, to my mind, is con- 
clusive against the claim of any sovereignty in the United 
States. I must repeat what has been said several times, in 
order to make the view open and clear, to-wit: That the 
thirteen States were sovereign before they ratified the Con- 
stitution. Each of the thirteen States was composed of a 
separate, distinct people who constituted the sovereign State. 
Those peoples taken thus separately were the same people 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 127 

who were known as the people and citizens of the United 
States, taken collectively. The people who constituted and 
managed and controlled the State governments were the identi- 
cal people who constituted, managed and controlled the United 
States government. If the people of the United States, taken 
en masse, had any sovereign powers they could only get them 
from the same people who, taken singly as States, possessed 
complete sovereign powers. But the two peoples, by States 
and en masse, are one and the same. Therefore, it was impossi- 
ble for the thirteen sovereign States to confer any sovereign 
powers on themselves as a mass. The Sovereignty, as said be- 
fore, does not pertain to paper documents, not to the machin- 
ery of government. It belongs to and springs from the people 
organized for government. 

Another view will bring out the transparent absurdity of 
the suggestion that, under our dual exercise of governmental 
powers, the sovereign States bestowed, or even tried to bestow, 
any sovereignty on the federal government. To simplify the 
view I will take two States, Virginia and Maryland, as the 
only States in the convention of 1787. "When the people of 
Virginia and Maryland, who were admittedly sovereign the 
moment they achieved their independence of George III and 
of Parliament, were in convention by deputies to frame a Con- 
stitution, and afterward each assembled in convention to ratify 
the work of their deputies, they, acting separately, adopted it. 
George Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Monroe, Pat- 
rick Henry and other Virginians in convention representing the 
sovereignty of Virginia, and Luther Martin, Daniel Carroll, 
John Hanson, James McHenry, et al., representing the sover- 
eignty of Maryland, agreed to and adopted the Constitution. 
The twelve amendments were added by 1803, and the Constitu- 
tion then stood as it was in 1830, when Mr. Webster was ex- 
pounding it. By his contention each State conferred on the two 
States that were united under the Constitution a part of its 
sovereign powers — that is, each stripped itself of powers the 
very essence of sovereignty, whereby they ceased to be sover- 
eign and became dependencies. They were sovereigns in sub- 
jection, thraldom, abject obedience, without remedy, to a super- 
ior created by themselves. Such was the bondage, the vassal- 



128 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

age, the voluntary subjection of these two quondam sovereigns 
to their creature, that should Maryland, for what she con- 
sidered oppression by the creature, withdraw from the alli- 
ance with Virginia, the creature — using the militia of Virginia 
and Maryland — could invade Maryland with armies, shoot 
down her citizens, and force her back into the alliance. The 
creature, it must not be forgotten, is not a State, has no sover- 
eignty, is dependent on the people of the two States for its 
officers, its army and navy, and money to pay expenses — for 
everything it has. It cannot have a President, Judge, or legis- 
lature without the consent and action of the voters of the two 
States. 



CHAPTER XVm. 

WEBSTER'S QUIBBLING ON WORDS. 

Mr, Webster said, in the debate with Calhoun, "I do not 
agree that the Constitution is a compact between the States 
in their sovereign capacities." In reply to Hayne he said, 
"The agreement between the States is a constitutional com- 
pact." Can any logician bring these two opinions into 
harmony? He said in reply to Calhoun, ''The Constitution 
is not a contract, but the result of a contract, meaning by 
contract no more than assent. Founded on consent, it is a 
government proper." 

What are we to understand when he says "the Constitu- 
tion founded on consent is a government proper?" By no 
possibie construction or imagination can a constitution be a 
government. There may be a government without a constitu- 
tion, and a constitution without a government. The constitu- 
tion was consented to by nine States, and was in force as a 
contract for nearly two years before there was a federal govern- 
ment. It is impossible for a constitution to be or to constitute 
a government. Throughout the debate with Hayne and Cal- 
houn, Mr. Webster repeatedly confounded government and 
constitution. They are in no sense identical, or synonyms. 

"The Constitution is not a contract but the result of a 
contract. The people agreed to make a constitution, but 
when made that constitution becomes what its name imports." 
That is to say, when the constitution is made it is a constitu- 
tion. That is, when a thing is, it is. That is undeniable, but 
it sounds like Dogberry's logic. It is worse than reasoning 
in a circle, for that can mislead, but this proposition is self-evi- 
dent to a child. 

But to say that the Constitution is not a contract, but the 
result of a contract, is an absurdity. When did the people 
of the United States, or of the States, contract to make the 
Constitution? When and where? How was the contract to 
make a contract, or compact, indicated, or expressed? "The 



130 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

people of the United States agreed" — he lugs in here the fal- 
lacy, or false premise he found in the preamble to the Con- 
stitution, to-wit : "We the people of the United States," etc. 
He knew too well what constitutes a contract, to-wit: parties 
willing to contract, able to contract and who actually do con- 
tract. 

When the people of each State agreed to send deputies to 
Philadelphia to prepare a paper, if they could agree on one, 
to be submitted to the people of each State for them to decide 
to accept or reject it, was that a contract? The deputies were 
not authorized to bind the States by what they — ^the deputies 
— might agree to. Therefore, what they said or did at Phila- 
delphia was not a contract. It was of no more effect than a 
suggestion, a consultation, a proposition that the deputies 
considered would be satisfactory to their respective principals. 
If rejected their labor was in vain. If accepted there would 
be a contract — a constitution. Where, then, was the contract 
that the Constitution was the result of? Mr. Webster con- 
tended that two contracts were made — one was the parent, 
the second was the offspring — that is — the Constitution. But 
he' quibbles on words. He says the Constitution was not a 
contract — it was the Constitution, and it was not a contract 
nor a compact, nor an agreement. He says the people of the 
United States, as one undistinguishable body or mass, as of 
one nation, first agreed to make a constitution and that was 
the contract from which resulted the constitution. When the 
basic premise of a syllogism is false, all that follows must be 
false. 

It is evident that Mr. Webster had reflected for years, and 
ad profundum, on the question made by South Carolina be- 
fore the debate began. He knew it was coming and he put 
on the armor he had picked up when it fell from the shoulders 
of Achilles on the bloody ground of Hoboken. He looked 
down the line of battle and surveyed the field with a master's 
eye, to find an impregnable position. Dropping the figure — I 
am convinced he did not neglect to bring to bear the Law of 
Nations on the powers and rights of each State as a Sovereign. 
Finding no tenable ground there for him to occupy, he re- 
viewed carefully the Constitution, and found it bristling with 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 131 

hostile abattis as thick as quills on the fretful porcupine. There 
was but one point d'appui that offered him a footing. That 
point was the preamble of the Constitution. As I have al- 
ready shown, he was like the feudal villain who was under 
bond to fight for his Baron whenever called upon. He had 
no choice of banners — the right or the wrong of the casus belli 
was all one to him. He had been bought with a price to serve 
in fetters, and in fetters he was bound to deliver on demand 
the best he held in stock, or could procure. He was not a free 
man. He must serve his master, or masters. Puritan greed 
had sought him because he was New England's Chrysostom, 
and the pagan devotees of Mammon, like the strange woman — 

"In the evening, in the twilight, in the black and dark 
night, with much fair speech caused him to yield; with the 
flattering of their lips they forced him." 

And as the sequel reveals, like "the young man void of 
understanding, who, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or a 
fool to the correction of the stocks," he chose the "bed decked 
with coverings of tapestry, with fine linen, and perfume of 
myrrh, aloes and cinnamon;" and the victim of the pagan de- 
votees, when he stretched forth his feeble hands and 
raised his failing voice to save the Union he so dearly loved, 
was saluted with jeers, scorn and contempt, and anathe- 
matized as another Benedict Arnold, and hounded to his 
grave. 

"With this explanation of the manacled condition Mr. Web- 
ster was in when the debate opened, we can understand why 
he was forced to take a position he was unable to maintain. 
He saw, as expressed by Senator Lodge, that the facts were 
against him. The Law of Nations was against him. The 
Constitution, in letter and spirit, was against him. Its case- 
ment of gold was studded all over with those jewels — richer 
and rarer than diamonds and rubies — "The States," "The 
States." He could not resort to the Law of Nations because 
he would therein encounter the Sovereignty of each State. 
He would be compelled to admit that the Constitution was a 
compact between thirteen sovereigns, and place himself at 
the mercy of Hayne and Calhoun. His only recourse, as al- 
ready said, was to assert boldly, brazenly and hopelessly, in 



132 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

the frowning face of the Constitution, and of its history rebuk- 
ing him, that the people as a mass, without regard for State 
lines and jurisdiction, and their sovereign rights and powers, 
had acted as one body in framing and adopting the Constitu- 
tion. But, to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's," 
it must be said that such was the power and skill of this 
Herculean gladiator, battling manacled and fettered, with the 
odds against him, although under the rapier thrusts of Hayne 
and the carving by the Damascus blade of Calhoun, he fell 
"bleeding at every pore," he "made the worse appear the 
better reason" and persuaded the sympathizing populace of 
the North that he had gained the victory. 

And this adjudication by the Puritan populace was not 
the first final judgment that had been handed down by that 
august and terrible tribunal. These Judges presided in the 
Coliseum and when they turned down their thumbs the thirsty 
sand drank the hot blood of barbarian captives. These Puri- 
tan Judges presided when the great question involving Divin- 
ity — "Shall I release unto you this man in whom I have found 
no fault?" was submitted to them by Pilate for their irrevoc- 
able decision. And these Judges shouted — "Away with this 
man, and release unto us Barabbas." These Puritan Judges 
presided in Paris over the deliberations of the Assembly, di- 
rected the counsels of the Committee of Safety, and pro- 
nounced final judgment from which there was no appeal. They 
even marched in the wake of the busy impartial tumbril that 
rumbled over the stones of Paris, freighted, now with a King, 
now a patriot, now with a pauper, and then with a Queen. 
A few of these Judges attended, carrying their knitting, and 
sat in the shadow of Madame Guillotine, to see that their de- 
crees did not fail. These are the same Puritan Judges who 
established slavery in Massachusetts in 1703 by statute, and 
refused, after many attempts, running through eighty years, 
to abolish it by statute; and at some hazy unrecorded date 
between 1776 and 1836, adjudged it abolished "by the decla- 
ration of Independence," or by decision of Lord Mansfield in 
the case of the negro, Somerset, in England in 1772, or by 
the "Bill of Rights" in the constitution of Massachusetts 
adopted 1780, "or by public opinion" (the populace). These 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 133 

are the Puritan Judges who, for many years, punished alleged 
criminals whose offenses were not defined by law, nor to 
which was any defined penalty afSxed — the discretion of these 
Puritan Judges being the only limit. Says Mr, Moore in his 
"Notes," — "Public opinion, at once the Great Ruler, Law 
Giver and Judge of the Anglo-Saxon Race (the Puritans) has 
held its throne and seat nowhere more firmly than in Massa- 
chusetts. The slave was emancipated by the force of 'public 
opinion,' and the same authority, without the absolute decla- 
ration of forms of law, continued (after such emancipation) 
to exclude the negro from actual, practical equality of civil 
and political as well as social rights." He adds, "The fact 
that Daniel Webster had not been able a few years before 
his death to determine the question satisfactorily is pretty 
good evidence that it was doubtful." The Constitution they 
adopted in 1780 was silent on slavery. It read — "No part of 
the property of any individual can, with justice, be taken 
from him, or applied to public uses, without his consent, or 
that of the representative body of the people," and "no sub- 
ject (citizen) shall be deprived of his property but by the 
judgment of his peers, or the law of the land." At that time 
slaves valued at a half-million dollars were owned in Massa- 
chusetts, and the next year were advertised as usual in a 
Boston paper for sale. 

But that omnipotent "Lawgiver — ^public opinion" — "the 
populace," assembled in the shops, on the wharves in the cod- 
fisheries and slums, and sat on the question, and wrote into 
the silent Constitution, with invisible ink — "negro slavery is 
hereby abolished." Before this was issued, the negro slaves 
in the Puritan Commonwealth had disappeared to reappear in 
warmer latitudes. Meantime, these Puritan Judges, whose 
ancestors presided over Destiny on the high Bench in the 
Coliseum, but whose near kin, as history discloses, were the 
Judiciary in Paris during "The Reign of Terror," had, in spare 
moments when not sacrificing to Mammon, taken up the pre- 
amble to the federal Constitution and found written between 
the lines the declaration that Nullification and Secession were 
treason to be punished with death. And Daniel "Webster, the 
expounder, par excellence, of that marvel of human wisdom. 



134 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

adopted, for a valuable as well as blood consideration, the 
interpretation put on it by his Puritan kin. It is with this 
senator and statesman, and with with the populace, innocent 
and ignorant of the laws — international and constitutional — 
that we have our cause of quarrel, and I now resume my 
humble effort to show his fatal error. I have quoted what he 
said the people had done in the three years between his reply 
to Hayne and his reply to Calhoun. The question which, as I 
have said, in my opinion, remains as unsettled as it was in 
1787, is so momentous, that I beg to be excused for repeating 
here a few of Mr. Webster's opening words: 

"There has been a time when, rising in this place, on the 
same question, I felt, I must confess, that something for good 
or evil to the Constitution of the country might depend on ah 
effort of mine. But circumstances have changed. Since that 
day. Sir, public opinion has become awakened to this 
great question; it has reasoned upon it as becomes an intelli- 
gent and patriotic community, and has settled it, or now seems 
in the progress of settling it, by an authority which none can 
disobey — the authority of the people themselves." 

In the history of debates, in all ages, no speaker, in my 
opinion, has ever, within the compass of so few words, passed 
such a withering judgment of condemnation on himself, or 
made such a damaging confession in open court. One or the 
other of the two conclusions those words make inevitable is, 
either Mr. Webster was not the learned lawyer Fame had 
crowned him as being, or, if such a great lawyer, he spoke as 
a purchased advocate. I shall endeavor to make the truth so 
plain that those who are not lawyers will see it clearly. Should 
I fail my weakness will be responsible and not the facts and 
the law. 

There was no Union of the States before the Constitution 
was adopted. The preceding Confederacy was not a Union. 
It is clear that the Constitution was the bond that brought 
the States together. It is equally true that the Constitution 
was then and is now the only force that holds the States 
together. If it were repealed to-morrow there would be no 
Union, because it alone commands what must be done to keep 
the federal government in operation. If there were no federal 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 135 

government there could be no Union. The States would auto- 
matically return to the position each held among the family 
of nations before the Constitution drew them together; and 
as each returned to its original position, it would carry with 
it unimpaired every attribute of sovereignty and the free exer- 
cise of every attribute. It is undeniable that each State be- 
fore the Union was as perfect a sovereign as ever existed 
under any name or having any form. Each State, being sover- 
eign, was necessarily a law unto itself. The reason for this is 
the same on which the Apostle based his remark that "the 
heathen is a law unto himself." It is because he was in a 
state of nature, and, as an individual, there was no law but 
the law of nature that bound or controlled him. Each State 
was independent of all laws except those that bind a man in 
a state of nature, that is, before he unites with other men for 
purposes to be agreed upon by them. Each State, being an 
entity like a man in a state of nature, was bound by no laws 
except those that control nations in their outward relations, 
that is to say in their relations to each other, and those laws 
are what nations have agreed to be just, humane and equitable, 
and which are compiled under the title "The Law of Nations." 
All other laws of a Sovereign are those for internal economy, 
or polity, and which a Sovereign makes by himself, or by some 
agency to which the Sovereign delegates his or its power to 
enact law for him or the people and for the government of 
his subjects or its citizens. Thus a State or nation is gov- 
erned by two codes of laws — one operating exclusively within, 
the other operating bej^ond its geographical borders. Just 
what are the powers, rights and privileges of a nation or State 
has not been definitely determined and catalogued. Those at- 
tributes arise from nature just as do the privileges, right, et 
cetera, of a man in a state of nature. It is difficult to state 
them on paper. However, without poetic license, it may be 
said, "he is monarch of all he surveys" until other men ap- 
pear on the scene. Vattel in his standard work, "The Law 
of Nations" says, among his "Preliminaries," — 

"Nations or States, being composed of men naturally free 
and independent, and who, before the establishment of civil 
societies, lived together in a state of nature." "Nations, or 



136 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

sovereign States, are to be considered as so many free persons 
living together in a state of nature." 

Every man in a state of nature is under obligations to 
other men, imposed by nature, which he must discharge. These 
obligations impose duties. As every man by nature has the 
right to life, liberty and happiness, he is under obligations 
to all men living in a state of nature not to do anything to 
deprive any other man of those rights. And this law of 
nature is the fundamental law that binds every nation, State, 
or sovereignty in any form. Nations, therefore, are aggrega- 
tions of men living as to each other in a state of nature. There 
is no other law by which they are or can be governed, so long 
as they remain separate, or do not change their natural status 
by voluntary act. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE FACTS WERE AGAINST WEBSTER. 

There exists throughout the North, and especially in that 
most enlightened region where fanaticism and avarice are the 
infallible interpreters of right and wrong, what seems to be a 
very indefinite idea of a sovereign, or of what constitutes 
sovereignty. This vague Conception has already cost the sacri- 
fice of a million lives and five billion dollars. This was the 
cash installment paid daily during four years. The money — 
probably a hundred-billions — the producers and skilled labor 
have. paid since 1865 to the New England philanthropists for 
standing on guard to protect them from foreign paupers, is 
not and never can be known. I shall endeavor to throw some 
light on the nature of sovereignty, especially of the sover- 
eignty of our States. 

Vattel, on page 2, of "Law of Nations." says: "Every 
nation that governs itself, under what form soever, without 
dependence on any foreign power, is a Sovereign State." It 
is important to bear in mind that there can not be a nation or 
a State without an aggregation of human beings. This defini- 
tion of a sovereign does not embrace the United States, or the 
States United. The government that represents them, is not 
without dependence on a foreign power. That foreign power 
was thirteen States in 1787 and is now forty-eight States. 

1st. A sovereign State is an assemblage of persons who 
govern themselves. 

2nd. A sovereign State is an assemblage of person who 
govern themselves without dependence on any foreign power. 

3rd. Only such a nation is a sovereign State as is vested 
with all the attributes of sovereignty. 

When the nine States agreed to the Constitution, it was no 
more than a written document that expressed what the States 
had agreed to. The Constitution received nothing from the 
ratifying States, Not one power or privilege common to all 
the States passed to or into the Constitution, although it was 



138 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

and has ever been Mr. Webster's ''noun-substantive." The 
powers and privileges and all attributes of sovereignty must 
from necessity be vested in some person or persons. As al- 
ready said, they may be held by one man — as a King, Monarch, 
Emperor or Czar — or be held by thousands, or millions of men 
— as in a Republic or State. Hence, the Constitution was not 
even the repository of any kind of powers that belonged to 
the States singly and collectively. For the same reason the 
government, or the departments thereof, did not receive from 
the States singly or collectively a single attribute of sover- 
eignty. The government of the United States is based on and 
stands upon the Constitution. There is no government until 
the offices named in the Constitution are filled by men chosen 
by the States — each acting separately. Before that event the 
government of the United States could take no sovereign pow- 
ers. There can be no nation, or State, no government, no 
sovereignty, without flesh, blood, bones, mind and will. These 
are not qualities of a government. A government is noth- 
ing more than sovereignty in action. But, even after the 
offices named to make a government of the United States are 
filled by appropriate officers, not one attribute of sovereignty 
passes from a State, or the States, to or into the government 
of the United States, or to or into the officers filling the offices 
which are necessary to constitute a government. If a single 
attribute of State sovereignty could pass to the federal gov- 
ernment, it would remain there vested with all its original 
vigor and indestructibility. Not only that, but the power 
once freely and voluntarily granted is irrevocable. 

Vattel says, "Every nation that governs itself, under what 
form soever, without dependence on any foreign power, is a 
Sovereign State." The word "foreign" here is not used in 
the sense of distance, but in the sense of independence of some 
other power or government. In the entire history of the 
world no government has existed that was more dependent 
on a foreign (or other) power than the government created 
by the thirteen States. The thirteen Sovereign States gave it 
life. Those and other added States have kept breath in its 
body, and but for their support it would vanish like a vision 
from the earth, and we could exclaim, "The earth hath bub- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 139 

bles, as the water has, and it was of them." Is such a gov- 
ernment, in any sense, in any particular, sovereign? If it 
has one attribute of sovereignty, where, in what, in or on 
whom is it lodged? Is it in the people of the United States? 
There are no people of the United States. That was one of 
Mr. Webster's subterfuges when replying to Mr. Calhoun. He 
Avas drowning and he grabbed a straw — "help me, Cassius, or 
I sink." Mr. Lodge is fair enough to say the facts were 
against "Webster in his debate with Hajoie and Calhoun. In 
the preamble to the Constitution he found comfortably enscon- 
ced millions of people whom he greeted as "We, the people 
of the United States," distinct from, acting independently of, 
the people of each State — or thirteen separate peoples, citizens 
of thirteen separate States. And his followers and dupes ever 
since 1833, like men drunk to saturation, have been two separ- 
ate bodies of people, one in each of the States divided — the 
other in the United States — or States United. In the popular 
mind the United States is a very distinct entity — or force — 
from the States United. It is a world power now, separate 
from and superior to each State or all the States United. This 
is a very wild, costly and dangerous delusion. 

I have said there was never a government so dependent 
as the United States. Instead of having a body of citizens 
of its own on whom to draw for civil officers, it has not one in 
all the forty-eight States. The States supply from their own 
citizens men to be President, men to be senators, men to be 
representatives, men to be judges, men to be diplomats, con- 
suls, revenue collectors, men to pay pensioners; and even that 
glorious band of patriots made up of some honorable, deserv- 
ing, brave men, and (side by side) of a gang of deserters, 
bounty jumpers, tramps and perjurers, are citizens of the 
several States. This boasted federal government — this agent 
of each and all the States — that has become diseased and drop- 
sical and swollen out to be an empire, when it gets pugnacious 
and decides to fight, has to ask the States to let it have soldiers 
to do the fighting. 

But, after the States supply the federal government with 
men to fill the civil offices, and the government is in full oper- 
ation, in whom can its sovereignty, if any, be vested? It 



140 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

must be borne in mind that sovereign attributes belong to a 
human being — to a sole governor, as a monarch, or to an ag- 
gregation of human beings, as is each of our States, and that 
there can not be any semblance of sovereignty in a written 
paper, or in the machinery called government. It must fol- 
low, therefore, that the sovereign attributes, if any, are 
vested in the men who fill the offices and operate the machin- 
ery. But this is impossible. These officers are transient. Their 
official lives are limited. They cannot live beyond a certain 
year, day and hour. If they hold the powers of a sovereign, 
what becomes of those powers when the officers die, resign, or 
go out by limitation? If they belong to the officers, (and there 
cannot be a federal government without officers) when they 
die or resign the sovereignty would expire also. It is very 
certain that the sovereign qualities cannot abide in the air 
awaiting a successor in office. They do not belong to or consti- 
tute a part of the corporation, or body politic, which is an 
imaginary machinery, and, like the earth, **was without form 
and void," until men from the States set it to running. Until 
officers were elected and assumed the offices, there was nothing 
but a writing called the Constitution. 

This question that has caused so much murder, so much 
waste of property, and lifetime suffering and heart-breaking, 
divested of the metaphysical gipsyism with which federalists 
have swindled the American people since 1789, when subjected 
to the simple rules of common sense applied to the history of 
the thirteen States and of the Constitution, and of the govern- 
ment conducted by the States acting together, that is called 
the United States, is neither a marvel nor a puzzle, it is not 
a riddle of Oedipism nor of Samson. If we go back to 1787 
and fix in our minds what each State was (free, independent, 
and in every particular and aspect sovereign — more so than 
King George III), then read the Constitution and get its spirit 
and plain language, and then follow the federal government 
through Washington's first administration, we cannot fail to 
see where sovereignty, one and undivided, is held and by whom. 
I say through Washington's first four years simply to show the 
practical working of the Constitution. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 141 

I must apologize to the reader again for going over ground 
already traversed in part. My desire to make this view of 
the analysis of our Constitution so plain that no man can fail 
to understand the relation between the States and the federal 
government, is my only excuse for this partial repetition. I 
believe this to be the most important knowledge that can bo 
acquired by Americans old and young. Had it been a part of 
the text books in every school, from the beginning of the 
federal government, I confidently believe the war of 1861 would 
have been postponed and possibly avoided. I do not say it 
would not have burst upon us later, for Puritan fanaticism 
which brewed that storm ''is not dead, but sleepeth" with one 
eye awake. Since its vulgar familiarity with the last object 
of its professed Samaritan altruism it has found reasonably 
active occupation in kicking the negro out of its Northern 
house and teaching him Latin, Greek and social equality in the 
South, at the expense of his late impoverished master. This 
gentle exercise is only indulged in because its twin devouring 
monster — Avarice — for fifty years, has been busy robbing the 
poor after hypnotising them by flattery and lying ; by protest- 
ing friendship — ''a charm to lull to sleep," and whining that 
it was going lean and hungry that they might live like lords, 
compared with foreign laborers. 

There is still another view, that to the writer's mind is con- 
clusive of the agency of the federal government, and, a fortiori, 
of its subordination to the States, and of the complete sover- 
eignty of each of the thirteen States and of every State admit- 
ted into the Union. It cannot be denied that each of the 
thirteen States possessed every attribute of sovereignty before 
and when they agreed to and adopted the Constitution. It 
cannot be denied that the citizens of Massachusetts were not 
citizens of any other State, and so of the citizens of every 
other State. It is also true that the citizens of Massachusetts 
and of the other twelve States acted without the co-operation, 
in any form and to any degree, of the citizens of any other 
State. It is, also, equally true that there was no out-lying 
territory beyond the borders of the States when the federal 
government was organized, and that whatever territory the 
United States acquired and held before the purchase of the 



142 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Louisiana tract, was donated by one or more of the States. 
Therefore, there were not any people or citizens of the United 
States, or States United, when the Convention was agreed to 
and adopted in 1787. And when the Convention wrote in the 
preamble to the Constitution, ''We, the people of the United 
States," it was impossible for them to have meant any body 
of the people except those who were citizens of the respective 
States then represented by those deputies who were speaking, 
and which States were to act on the document when it should 
be submitted to each State to ratify, or to reject. With the 
foregoing premises undeniable, it seems to be a short step to 
the logical conclusion that the sovereignty of each of the 
thirteen States is as full and unimpaired as it was on the day 
Great Britain acknowledged each to be a free and independ- 
ent State. 

The contention of the federalists is that when the nine 
States ratified the Constitution, and it was put into operation, 
they conferred a part of their sovereign powers irrevocably 
on the federal government. I have already shown that sover- 
eignty cannot be conferred on an inanimate thing; that noth- 
ing but human beings can be vested with even a single power, 
privilege or quality of sovereignty. Therefore, if the States, 
acting separately, parted with a part of their sovereignty, 
those parts had to be vested in grantees that had flesh and 
bones, mind and will. Where were the grantees -who took, or 
were intended by the grantors to be the recipients of those 
sovereign, regal attributes, with power to involve the grantees 
in war; power to tax the grantors and their heirs and chil- 
dren without limit and without responsibility? It must be 
remembered that when one man makes a grant of property 
there must be some one to receive the title. For every grantor 
there must be a grantee. A man owning an estate in fee sim- 
ple, cannot make a deed of that property to himself. The 
grantee must be another human — man or woman — male or 
female. Now, as there were no other people in the States, 
other than those who were speaking in and by the Constitu- 
tion, if they were trying to confer the full title to their right 
and power to declare war and to levy taxes, they were at- 
tempting to perform a feat that in law — in municipal law, by 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 143 

the law of nations, by the law of common sense, it was and is 
impossible for a man, or nation, or emperor, or State, to ac- 
complish — that is, for a man, or nation, owning the absolute 
perfect title to anything that man can own, to make a deed 
to himself of that property. 

When the people of the thirteen States said, "Congress 
shall have power to do" many acts, as, for instance, to de- 
clare war, they were speaking of a body of men to be selected 
from themselves, from their own ranks. When George Wash- 
ington, as a deputy, said, ''there shall be a President of the 
United States," he was preparing to appoint himself to that 
office. When he said, ''the President shall have power to 
nominate judges, ambassadors," etc., he was granting that 
power to himself. All the powers granted by the Constitu- 
tion were granted to the people who made the Constitution. 
It was a family arrangement made by thirteen political neigh- 
bors to have a common agent to manage certain parts of their 
individual business that each could not manage so well. It 
was a compact for mutual safety. It was a trusteeship for 
the use and benefit of all alike, having a common and equal 
interest. It was in no sense an agreement to strip themselves 
of any sovereign attribute. No necessity existed for that 
sacrifice. The deputation, the grant of powers, was not to 
and on a foreign nation, people, or State, that could receive 
and hold them. The people of the States, so far from giv- 
ing away any of their powers were conserving them, acting 
on the truism "in union there is strength." 

Under the popular conception of the federal government, 
according to the construction of the Constitution by farmers, 
fishermen, sailors, draymen, bootblacks, gamblers, et id omne. 
genus, who had got the kinks out of Webster's head that were 
there in 1812, and got him on the right track to debate with 
Calhoun in 1833, and which construction produced the war of 
1861? Mrs. Shelley's intoxicated imagination drew, Kvith 
prophetic accuracy, the forecast of the people in these States 
United, when she bodied forth the meddling fool, Franken- 
stein, who fell to meddling with the laws of nature and pro- 
duced a monster that tormented him first and then destroyed 
him. If that popular opinion of the federal government be 



144 TRUE VINDICATION OT THE SOUTH 

correct, Frankenstein, the creator of it, is dead and the crea- 
ture that destroyed him has his powers and attributes and can, 
without let or hindrance, destroy at will. If this view be 
the law, it were far better to have remained with a fostering 
mother than to go into the wilderness and give birth to a 
lawless, Godless, brutal child that robs and murders like a 
pirate and spends money like a bawd. This construction, de- 
vised by Mammon and enforced by fanatics, transformed 
Elysium into Pandemonium, and, although the fire is only 
smouldering, the demons, the fanatics, who fanned it into a 
whirlwind of fiery tongues, are still on hand. 



CHAPTER XX. 

WEBSTER'S "PARENTAL" FALLACY. 

Facing all these familiar facts, and I might say family his- 
tory, Mr. Webster, in reply to Calhoun, is driven by them to 
resort to chicanery and charlatanry so open as to justify 
the belief that he was speaking to earn his fee, or pension. He 
says: "Let me inquire what the Constitution relies upon for 
its own continuance and support, I hear it often suggested 
that the States, by refusing to appoint senators and electors, 
might bring this government to an end. Perhaps that is 
true; but the same may be said of the State governments 
themselves. Suppose the legislature of a State, having the 
power to appoint the governor and the judges, should omit 
that duty, would not the State government remain unorgan- 
ized? The maintenance of this Constitution does not de- 
pend on the plighted faith of the States, as States, to support 
it ; and this again shows it is not a league. It relies on individ- 
ual duty and obligations." 

What shall we think of the Great Expounder of the Con- 
stitution, who denies facts written all over the face of that 
instrument? This is the natural offspring of the parental 
fallacy — "We, the people of the United States * * * do 
ordain," etc. He is constantly confounding the Constitution 
and the government as one, and using them as equivalents. 
They are as different and distinct as the ground and the build- 
ing standing on the ground ; as variant as the plans and draw- 
ings of an architect, and the house built according to those 
plans. The Constitution has no maintenance, no support, in 
the sense he speaks of. It is the government created in com- 
pliance with the Constitution, which, he says, does not depend 
on the plighted faith of the States, as States. 

Let us, at the expense of a little repetition, "take the lati- 
tude" of this statesman, who, like "the mariner when he has 
been tossed for many days, in thick weather, and on an un- 
known sea, naturally avails himself of the first pause in the 



14 6 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to ascertain how far the 
elements have driven him from his true course." There is 
not a paragraph, a sentence, a line, phrase, or vv^ord in the 
Constitution from which a sophist, however reckless, can draw 
the remotest implication that the Constitution, or the govern- 
ment erected on it, depends on anything but the States, as 
States. The States acting separately framed the Constitu- 
tion. The States acting separately at different times, each 
within its own boundaries, adopted, or ordained the Consti- 
tution. The States acting separately appoint electors who 
elect the President. The States acting separately elect Repre- 
sentatives and Senators, In short, there can be no officer of 
the government, no tariff, no revenue, no army, no navy, no 
courts, unless the States as States, acting separately, elect 
Congressmen, and electors who elect the President. 

The Constitution cannot be amended except by the States 
acting severally. The people of all the States acting together 
cannot meet and amend, or abolish the Constitution. All the 
voters, fifteen or more million strong, might meet and ordain 
amendments to the Constitution, and their enunciations would 
be as idle as the croaking of a frog. They, en masse, did not 
make it, and they cannot unmake it. And why? Because 
the writing prescribes how it can be amended, and no other 
power but the States, acting separately, can touch it. The 
voters of thirteen separate States have directed how the Con- 
stitution can be amended, and there can be no other way so 
long as that condition is in force. The people, en masse, that 
is, the people counted together as a whole, as the people of 
France, or England are counted, have no connection with the 
federal government. In that sense, there is not a single at- 
tribute of sovereignty in the ninety million people. In that 
sense there are no people of the United States. The Consti- 
tution — the government's only chart, its only raison d'etre, 
its life-breath — knows nothing of the solid mass of people. 
They did not appear as a factor in making the Constitution, 
nor in putting the government in running order, nor in keep- 
ing it going. This is demonstrated by the fact that no man 
can vote outside of his own State. As soon as he passes the 
boundary of his own State he loses the power by which alone, 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 147 

imder our State laws, he can act as one of the citizens of a 
sovereign State. As a citizen of the United States he has no 
ballot ; he has no domicile, no testamentary capacity. The only 
point at which the government touches the entire people is 
by taxation, direct or indirect. There is not one act relating 
to the government that the entire people, acting together, can 
do. Even direct taxes must be apportioned among the several 
States according to their respective numbers. 

But Mr. Webster proceeds with innumerable errors begot- 
ten of their natural mother — *'We, the people of the United 
States * * * do ordain," etc. Here is a small select group : 

"The Constitution of the United States creates direct rela- 
tions between the government and individuals." 

Yes, but who and what are these "individuals?" They 
are the citizens of the several States, and each one constitutes 
a part of the sovereignty of each State, over whom the thirteen 
States, acting independently and separa,tely, gave the federal 
government each and every power it possesses, and then said, 
"these few powers you can exercise exclusively for our bene- 
fit, and not one more. ' ' There were no other people than those 
in the States and there were then no territories. 

Again, he continues: "This government can punish in- 
dividuals for treason and all other crimes in the code when 
committed against the United States." These individuals, 
as a part of sovereign States, ordained by the Constitution 
they framed that the federal government should have power 
to protect itself from injury or destruction by treason, and 
to punish all crimes committed against it. This is what Mr. 
"Webster calls such direct relations between the government 
and the people or individuals, as to prove, to some extent, 
that the entire mass of the people then in the thirteen States, 
without regard to State lines or localities, came together and 
ordained the Constitution. 

Again: "It has power also to tax individuals in any mode, 
and to any extent, and the further power of demanding from 
individuals military service." No government can be oper- 
ated without money, and the power to tax for that purpose 
had to be given. But, from that does it follow that the whole 
people, regardless of States, conferred that power? A govern- 



148 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

ment given power to wage war must have an army. Wliere 
else can it get soldiers but from citizens of the States? There 
are no other people in the United States. But the same ques- 
tion comes up, growing out of the first fallacy — "We, the peo- 
ple" — which question is — Who and what are these individuals 
or citizens who may be soldiers? And the same answer is 
inevitable. There were no individuals — ^not one — except those 
who owed allegiance to their respective States, and who were 
part of the people who constituted the sovereignty of each 
State, and who framed and afterward agreed to the Constitu- 
tion. But Mr. Webster failed to quote a very essential part 
of the Constitution relating to military service. The govern- 
ment cannot, at will, reach out and grab individuals by the 
hair and force them into military service. When Washing- 
ton became President, although he was commander-in-chief 
of the army and navy, he had not a soldier or sailor under 
his authority. The President when he needs soldiers, must 
request the governors of the States to supply him, and the 
governors consenting, have the reserved power to name the 
officers of the companies, battalions, or regiments he orders 
out. 

Mr. Webster had to notice Mr. Calhoun's remarks on the 
sovereignty of the people of the States. This was an obstruc- 
tion in his path which he could not surmount. This perform- 
ance was indeed the most admirable piece of art of the many 
that form the mosaic of this wonderful exhibition of Jesuiti- 
cal evasion. Cagliostro never surpassed in grace, dignity and 
apparent delight his reception of an unwelcome creditor, or 
officer of the law, nor dismissed him with more consummate 
skill, than Llr. Webster took up and despatched Mr. Calhoun's 
argument on the sovereignty of the States. His action has a 
parallel in the magic of the east. The Hindoo magician comes 
in, bares his arms, takes the child from the basket, fondles it, 
smiles on it, kisses it, tosses it from hand to hand with grace, 
skill and strength, and as the spectators wonder what he will 
do Avith it, he suddenly throws it in the air above his head 
and it disappears forever. The spectators are delighted, they 
applaud, the magician bows his acknowledgment, and the 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 149 

crowd disperses, wondering what had become of the child. 
This specimen is worthy of quotation: 

**Mr. President, the nature of sovereignty, or sovereign 
power, has been extensively discussed by gentlemen on this 
occasion, as it generally is when the origin of our government 
is debated. But I confess myself not entirely satisfied with 
arguments and illustrations drawn from that topic." 

As Samuel Weller says — "that is a self-hevident proposi- 
tion." No man standing on the preamble to the Constitu- 
tion and drawing from it material for warfare could be "satis- 
fied" with Mr. Calhoun's demonstration that the people in 
each State were sovereign, and that the Constitution was 
framed and ordained by thirteen separate peoples, because 
that is fatal to "We, the people of the United States." 

Again: "The sovereignty of government is an idea be- 
longing to the other side of the Atlantic. No such thing is 
known in America. Our governments are limited. In Europe, 
sovereignty is of feudal origin, and imports no more than the 
state of the sovereign. It comprises his rights, duties, exemp- 
tions, prerogatives and powers. But with us, all power is 
with the people. They alone are sovereign; and they erect 
what governments they please, and confer on them such pow- 
ers as they please. None of these governments are sovereign 
in the European sense of the word, all being restrained by 
written Constitutions. ' ' 

Here is his oft-repeated error, or sophism, in speaking of 
the sovereignty of government. No government is sovereign 
anywhere, except where a king or monarch, czar or emperor 
holds in himself all the elements and machinery of govern- 
ment. That which ordains government, whether one man, or 
millions, holds the so\ereign power. Government is no more 
than sovereignty in action; or, as he says in the last quota- 
tion — "sovereignty is the state of the sovereign and com- 
prises his rights, duties, etc." 

Again: "It seems to me, therefore, that we only perplex 
ourselves when we attempt to explain the relations existing 
between the general government and the several State govern- 
ments according to the ideas of sovereignty which prevail 
under systems essentially different from our own. 



150 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Yes, Mr. Calhoun's reasoning did give Mr. "Webster "per- 
plexity" enough, and the juggler tosses the question of State 
sovereignty, which he had fondled so lovingly, high in the 
air, to be seen no more in that debate. 

Mr. Webster's change of position, not change of opinion, 
on Secession, in 1833, was his fatal mistake. He had warned 
President Madison in 1812 that the embargo might cause sepa- 
ration (secession) of the New England States. In 1830 he had 
not changed that view of the Constitution which he had been 
studying for thirty-one years. But his clientele and constitu- 
ents changed their position, and in the debate of 1833 he put 
aside his opinion and maintained their view, as he was em- 
ployed in their interests. That his first opinion had changed 
there is no reason to believe except by his acts, because in 
1850 he asserted as true that an agreement, or contract, or 
compact, broken on one side is not binding on the other. He 
was speaking of slavery and the nullification by Northern 
States, and Legislatures and mobs in those States, of the fugitive 
slave laws passed by Congress. If the covenant had been 
broken by the North the South was free and could secede. That 
was his declaration in 1850 when the snows of winter had 
cooled the ardor of youth, and when he saw the ruin his 
treacherous tongue had wrought. 

The first wicked lie must have a large progeny to help the 
guilty one out of the scrape. So was it with Mr. Webster's 
first fatal mistake, when, being overwhelmed, he took refuge 
in the preamble to the Constitution, and seized on "We, the 
people," for defense. 

Here is another false position, born of the first prolific 
error. When reminded that the States by non-action could 
destroy this big bully that was riding over and trampling 
down his parent, he answered — "The Constitution utters its 
behests in the name and by authority of the people, and it 
exacts not from the States any -plighted public faith to main- 
tain it. On the contrary, it makes its own preservation depend 
on individual duty and individual obligations. Sir ! the States 
cannot omit to appoint senators and electors!" (There is 
something thrillingly assuring in that prounciamento by such 
high authority! Now, observe the convincing reason.) "It 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 151 

is not a matter resting in State discretion or State pleasure. 
The Constitution has taken better care of its own preserva- 
tion. It lays its hand on individual conscience and individual 
duty. It incapacitates any man to sit in the legislature of 
a State who shall not first have taken his solemn oath to sup- 
port the Constitution of the United States. From the obli- 
gation of that oath no State power could discharge him. All 
the members of the State legislature are as religiously bound 
to support the Constitution of the United States as they are 
to support their own State Constitutions. Nay, Sir! they are 
as solemnly bound to support it as we ourselves are who are 
members of Congress." 

In all forensic advocacy, political debates and judicial an- 
nouncements in this country, from the Revolution of 1776, to 
date, there is no utterance that approaches this in apparent 
simplicity of abiding faith in the unyielding virtue of the 
"individual conscience" and the martyrdom of politicians. 
"Individual Conscience!" "Solemnly sworn to support the 
Constitution!" "Religiously bound!" And, this, too, by one 
of America's greatest intellects and reasoners; this from the 
son of New England, who, like Saul of Kish, towered head 
and shoulders above all her other sons! How true that the 
first lie breeds a big family of lies. At the moment when this 
man was fighting behind the preamble to the Constitution, and 
was crying against his opponents — "Oh! ye of little faith," 
people, preachers, members of legislatures who had sworn to 
support the Constitution of the United States which recog- 
nized slaves as property, had turned thieves and were steal- 
ing negro slaves through the South and sending them to Can- 
ada by the Underground Railroad. It was about this time 
that Henry Ward Beecher, after midnight, took two negro 
women in a conveyance at Cincinnati, and, with the aid of 
another man, drove them back in the woods of Ohio and de- 
livered them to a man whose business it was to receive stolen 
negroes and forward them to Canada. And Mr. Webster lived 
to see the majority of legislators of Northern States perjure 
themselves by enacting statutes expressly to oppose and 
nullify the fugitive slave laws of Congress. Yes, and he lived 
long enough to see this perjury and mob-rule, and stealing of 



153 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

negroes reduce the South to the condition which, in his opin- 
ion, expressed in the memorial to President Madison, made 
secession not only justifiable but a necessity. And in his 
speech at Capon Springs, Va., in 1850, he, as has been stated, 
told the country that "a contract broken on one side is not 
binding on the other." 

Mr. Webster indulged himself in such fustian, rant and 
pedagogic bombast as the following: 

"Sir! I must say to the honorable Senator that, in our 
American political grammar. Constitution is a noun substan- 
tive; it imports a distinct and clear idea of itself; and it is 
not to lose its importance, and dignity, it is not to be turned 
into a poor, ambiguous, senseless, unmeaning adjective, for 
the purpose of accommodating any new set of political notions. 
Sir! we reject this new rule of syntax altogether. "We will 
not give up our forms of political speech to the grammarians 
of the school of nullification. By the Constitution we mean 
not a "constitutional compact," but simply and directly the 
Constitution — the fundamental law; and if there be one word 
in the language which the people of the United States under- 
stand, it is that one word. We know no more of a "constitu- 
tional compact" between sovereign powers than we know of 
a constitutional indenture of co-partnership," etc. 

Poor Mr. Calhoun! To be lectured in that pedagogic, 
pedantic, Puritanic, New Englandic and bossing style about 
his bad grammar and unconstitutionality in using the phrase 
"constitutional compact," and that, too, in public, in the 
United States Senate, and to be chucked about the head with 
"nouns substantive," with "Sirs!" with ambiguous, sense- 
less, unmeaning adjectives," and all this castigation only be- 
cause he had made one mistake in his speech on the Force 
Bill a few days before he received this spanking by the great- 
est of all New England's pedagogues. Mr. Calhoun did say 
"constitutional compact." He was caught in the act. He 
had the goods. He was guilty, and he was punished in the 
good old way adopted by Puritan manners and conscience. 
That is, he was pilloriod. What could he say or do but plead 
guilty? 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 153 

The reader will bear in mind that after the debate between 
Hayne and Webster in January, 1830, a bill was introduced 
in Congress to force South Carolina, by military power, and 
that bill was called the Force Bill. Between 1830 and 1833 
Mr. Calhoun entered the Senate, and in January 1833 he had 
delivered a speech on the Force Bill, in which he used the 
words ''constitutional compact." To this speech Mr. "Webster 
replied on January 16th, 1833, and from that speech the quo- 
tation above is taken. Mr. Calhoun then delivered a speech 
(January 26th) as a rejoinder to Mr. "Webster's reply made to 
him on January 16th. In this rejoinder Mr. Calhoun did the 
very best he could. He said: 

'*! regret that I exposed myself to the criticism of the 
Senator. I certainly did not intend to use any expression of 
a doubtful sense, and if I have done so, the Senator must at- 
tribute it to the poverty of my language, and not to design. I 
trust, however, the Senator will excuse me when he hears my 
apology. In matters of criticism, authority is of the highest 
importance, and I have authority of so high a character in 
this case, for using the expression which he considers so 
obscure and unconstitutional, as will justify me even in his 
eyes. It is no less than the authority of the Senator himself." 

Mr. Calhoun then read a paragraph in Mr. "Webster's reply 
to Hayne in 1830, and continued: *'It will be seen by this 
extract, that the Senator not only uses the phrase ''constitu- 
tional compact," which he now so much condemns, but, what 
is of still more importance, he calls the Constitution itself 'a 
compact' — 'a bargain,' — which contains important admissions 
having a direct and powerful bearing on the main issue in- 
volved in the discussion, as will appear in the course of my 
remarks." 

Mr. "Webster had said in his speech in reply to Calhoun's 
on the Force Bill, ""When sovereign communities are parties, 
there is no essential difference between a compact, a confeder- 
ation, and a league." Here was an admission that put him 
out of court. In his reply to Haj-ne he said nothing of ""We, 
the people," but when he admitted that an agreement between 
sovereigns is a compact, or confederation, he had to resort to 
the preamble to argue that the people, en masse, and not the 



154 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

States, which he could not deny were sovereign, had framed 
and ordained and ratified the Constitution. 

"Well may Mr. Webster's biographer, Mr. Lodge, frankly 
admit that the facts were against him in this debate, and that 
the populace wanted him to win, and, therefore, he won. His 
logic was not to blame. The cause he espoused defeated him. 
he was on the wrong side. The counsel and advocate was 
earning his pension. He choked into silence his conscientious 
conviction of thirty years on secession, and forgot his duty 
to his country. 



CHAPTER XXI. 
WEBSTER'S MISINTERPRETATION OF 

THE "PREAMBLE." 

We see this redoubtable Chieftain of New England dodg- 
ing the *Hhe States" that stand as inspired interpreters all 
along the Constitution, and resorting to the expressionless 
preamble for inspiration to tell the world what the Constitu- 
tion means. The preamble is no more a key to that structure 
than a portico is evidence of the contents of a palace; or the 
''Oyes! Oyes!" of the crier of a court is an announcement of 
a decision the Judge is about to deliver. The preamble really 
seems about as useful to us to teach what the Constitution 
contains, as would be a door-mat to unlock a door to see what 
is in the house. 

The preamble does not contain a single declaration of any- 
thing the people intended to say in the Constitution. It is a 
declaration of what they expected to accomplish by making a 
joint agreement — "to form a more perfect union, establish 
justice, insure domestic tranquility," etc. The convention 
could not say, — "We, the people of Virginia, Georgia, Rhode 
Island, New York, etc., do ordain," etc., because that would 
have assumed that all the States would accept the terms of 
the writing. The delegates might have been severely criti- 
cized had they named the thirteen States, as only nine were 
required to accept to give life to the agreement. It would 
have been "counting chickens before they were hatched" to 
have named all the States. They could not select any nine as 
certain to agree. As it was, some took two years to decide, 
and some agreed by a bare majority. Hence, the delegates 
had to say, "We, the people of the United States." 

We have heard him assert that the people had already 
waived aside the Judges who wore gowns, and had taken up 
the Constitution, and, -after due consideration, without argu- 
ment, had decided that that contract made Nullification and 



156 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Secession treason. We liave heard him announce that the 
Constitution made provision for its own preservation and is, 
in no sense, dependent on the States for protection, or its life. 
We have heard him give as the reason for this protection, 
that legislators, who had sworn to support the Constitution, 
would not violate that oath! 

Can any lawyer, or judge, who is not a blind partisan, say 
that the "Great Expounder of the Constitution" was honest 
in that debate? Did he not weigh the value of Protection to 
New England against the safety of the Union, and tip the 
scales in favor of Protection? He was too great a lawyer 
not to know that he was trifling with the destiny of the repub- 
lic — that, as Captain in command, he was heading for the 
breakers! I have said he had carefully surveyed the field of 
battle and he saw the coming struggle would not be determ- 
ined by the Constitution, but that it would turn on the Laws 
of Nations. Knowing this, he, throughout two debates, took 
his stand on the Constitution — in solido — and its preamble, 
and fired a hundred rounds, thunderously, with "the Con- 
stitution" — "the government" — "the people" — "the people!" 
And when Calhoun challenged him to leave the Constitution 
and to make the gage of battle on the broader field of "The 
Laws of Nations," he ignored the challenge and answered, "I 
stand. Sir, on the 'noun-substantive' — the Constitution." 

In reviewing these debates, I have attained the point where 
it is in order to consider what seems to be the law that is the 
touchstone to determine the question made by the Northern 
States when the Southern States seceded. They assumed with 
the arrogance and defiance of numbers and superior strength : 

1st. That the Union was formed to exist in perpetuity. 

2nd. That, therefore, no State has the right to secede. 

3rd. That all differences between States should be decided 
by the U. S. Supreme Court. 

4th. That Congress, acting through the President as com- 
mander-in-chief of the army and navy, is vested by the Con- 
stitution with power to make war on a seceding State to force 
it to obey the laws of Congress; or, 

5th. If such authority and power be not expressly given 
to Congress, still, they are necessarily implied, on the ground 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 157 

that every nation has, by the law of nations, the inherent 
right to preserve its existence by any means ; including war. 

6th. That, as a corollary to the last contention, the U. S. 
government was a nation in 1861. 

It will be observed that the Constitution is silent on every 
one of the six propositions. There is not a line or word in 
that writing that even remotely refers to any one of the six 
claims. Every one is an assumption. There is no positive 
law to support even one of them, except the fifth, and that 
has no pertinence to the question under discussion, unless the 
advocates of it will, also, assert as a necessary precedent 
ground that the government of the United States was a nation 
in 1861. I will anticipate an answer that will be made that 
the fourth contention by the Northern people is expressly 
provided for by the Constitution in these words, to-wit : ' ' Con- 
gress shall have powei^to provide for calling forth the militia 
to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrection and 
repel invasions." This provision will be considered at the 
proper titae. 

A few general statements, although already made in pre- 
ceding chapters, must be repeated in order to assure a clear un- 
derstanding of the law, which, in my opinion, decides the dispute 
that, by a fratricidal war, has riven this country in twain. 

First. In 1787 there were in this country thirteen sovereign 
States, each separate, free and independent. 

Second. Each of those States, free and independent, sent 
deputies to Philadelphia to confer, and, if they could agree, 
to frame a Constitution on and by which a government might 
be formed to represent the thirteen States in the exercise of 
such of their powers as sovereigns must exercise in their i Na- 
tions to and with other sovereigns, and, also, to exercise a 
few of the powers that sovereigns exercise for domestic peace 
and tranquility, and for the interests and happiness of their 
subjects. 

Third. The deputies, representing each State, should they 
agree on a proposition, were to submit it to their separate 
States, for separate action by each State, for the people of 
each State, acting separately, to approve or to reject the 
proposition. 



158 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Fourth. The deputies agreed on a proposition to be called 
a Constitution, which was submitted to each State and each 
State, acting separately, at different dates, within its own 
boundaries and in its sovereign capacity, at its seat of govern- 
ment, approved the writing and ratified the action of the 
deputies. 

Fifth. The Constitution being thus agreed to, each State, 
acting separately, proceeded to organize a government in ac- 
cordance with the terms of their agreement; each State elect- 
ing electors to vote for a President and Vice-President; each 
State electing Representatives and Senators to Constitute a 
Congress; these electors from each State met in their respect- 
ive States, elected a President and Vice-President; the Presi- 
dent, then, with the consent of the Senate, appointed judges, 
ambassadors, consuls and all other executive appointees, and 
the federal government was organized to exercise the limited 
powers committed to it by the Constitution. 

Sixth. By the Constitution the States expressly provided 
to retain absolute control of the government thus organized. 
They retained the elective franchise to be exercised by citizens 
of each State on terms to be prescribed as each State should 
desire and decide ; and no citizen Z)f one State can vote in any 
other State, They kept control of the Constitution by provid- 
ing that three-fourths of the States can amend it in any 
particular — by adding to or taking from it. The power to 
enact a law carries with it the power to amend the law; and 
amendment covers subtraction as well as addition. Further- 
more, the power of a sovereign to make its or his own laws 
includes the power to repeal those laws. So that, as sovereign 
States made this law — the Constitution — and agreed that 
three-fourths of their number can, at will, amend it ; and as a 
sovereign that makes a law can repeal it, the number of 
States that can subtract can also repeal. Three-fourths of the 
States can amend by repealing the power to declare war, to 
levy taxes. 



CHAPTER XXn. 

AN AJMAZING IGNORANCE AND A 

SUGGESTED SPEECH. 

It is amazing to Southerners trained in the simplest laws 
and ethics that govern nations in their conduct inter sese, to 
see, hear and read of the childlike innocence and complacency 
of ignorance displayed by Northern historians, publicists and 
pamphleteers when pointing with pride to the final construc- 
tion of the Constitution made "by the people." They style 
this unexpressed, unascertained, uncanvassed, and, therefore, 
unknown will of some of the people — no number nor locality 
stated — a construction of the Constitution, and a decision and 
judicial judgment of its meaning from which there is no ap- 
peal. With them it is the last word, a finality, although not 
one of the people — not even one of the imaginary judges con- 
sisting of the people — ever heard of, or dreamt of, or thought 
of the question in dispute. 

Mr. Lodge says (as already quoted) that in 1830, Mr. Web- 
ster, in reply to Hayne, gave voice to the opinion of the Con- 
stitution as held by "the populace." What populace? Where 
were they? How, when and where did Mr. Webster learn 
what the Populace thought of nullification? He knew, as 
well as he knew where his home was, what the populace in 
and adjoining New England thought of secession. He had 
heard, a thousand times, probably, of their opinion claiming 
the right to secede. Up to 1830, no one at the North ques- 
tioned the right of each State to secede. After Webster's 
speech in answer to Hayne, 1830, it is claimed that he had but 
echoed the popular decision. There had not been a gathering 
of the people; no meeting, not even a bar-room conference; 
but Mr. Lodge insists that the populace had spoken before 
1830, up to which date the doctrine of secession had not been 
thought of in the South except when the press noticed some 
of the many threats by New England to secede. 



160 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

A construction of the Constitution by the populace ! Until 

1829 the word Nullification had not been heard by the peo- 
ple, except by a few in New England. They, the body of the 
people, did not know the meaning of that word. Yet, we are 
to believe that the majority of the people had been for years 
debating whether the act of nullification by a State could be 
constitutional, and had decided it could not. Is there any 
other statement or contention by a historian that is or can bo 
so absurd as this? That the people had ever come to an agree- 
ment against Nullification is absurdly false; any agreement, 
even if unanimous against, or in favor of. Nullification, would 
be equally absurd as a binding construction, or as a legal, or 
judicial opinion. No ! this is but a blind. It is a soothing 
plaster to cover "Webster's self-inflicted wound. It is a stalk- 
ing-horse on which to escape the charge that his opinion of 

1830 was the echo of the forty (40) manufacturers who guar- 
anteed his pension for service rendered them in Congress. 

If it is amazing to hear a learned writer, who is not a 
lawyer, speak of great questions arising out of the Constitu- 
tion being judicially decided by popular opinion, what are 
lawyers and judges to think, say and do, when they hear the 
"Great Expounder of the Constitution" advance the same 
legal heresy, and see it planted in the mind of the rabble, or 
mob, to hatch out chaos? Near the opening of Mr. Webster's 
reply to Calhoun, he said: 

"Mr, President, if I considered the constitutional ques- 
tion now before us as doubtful as it is important * * * this 
would be to me a moment of deep solicitude. Such a moment 
has once existed. There has been a time when, rising in this 
place" (when he replied to Hayne, 1830), "I felt, I must 
confess, that something for good or evil to the Constitution 
of the country might depend on an effort of mine. But circum- 
stances are changed. Since that day. Sir, public opinion 
has become awakened to this great question; it has grasped 
it, it has reasoned upon it, as becomes an intelligent and patri- 
otic community, and has settled it, or now seems in the 
progress of settling it, by an authority which none can disobey 
— the authority of the people themselves." 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 161 

No demagogue, however skilled in his destructive art, has 
ever thrown to the mob a more dangerous apple of discord. 
It sounds as terrible as if it were the announcement of the 
decision of anarchists in convention with firebrands in hand. 
We hear its ominous echo each time the lion hunter from 
wildest Africa, in his wild hunt for the Presidency the third 
time, stabs his once bosom friend, and appeals to labor to 
fight capital and despoil it. In the debate with Hayne, three 
years before the above stunning announcement that "the peo- 
ple had settled the question," Mr, "Webster had contended 
that the people of South Carolina could not decide and settle 
the question of nullification, because the Constitution had pro- 
vided a Supreme Court to decide all such issues — such as the 
constitutionality of an Act of Congress. But the question of 
nullification and Secession could be settled by the people of 
the North, and there could be no appeal from that popular 
decision of the most important political question any people 
on earth ever had to decide — a question involving the life of 
a republic, and the happiness of millions then, and of hun- 
dreds of millions to follow. 

That Senator Lodge should not understand the elementary 
Laws of Nations and the Constitution is not surprising. He 
is not a lawyer. Like John Fiske, he is a literateur, a his- 
torian, a renovator of old furniture for new shelves, a fur- 
bisher of thrice told tales, a decanter of old wines into new 
bottles; not a reasoner, but a narrator; a late recruit enlisted 
to maintain a losing cause for a private's pay. It is but a 
natural sequence that he should imagine that the only bond 
holding the States together is to be interpreted by the popu- 
lace — laymen like himself. But he must be excused, forgiven, 
as we find that he has only paraphrased the "Great Expounder 
of the Constitution," his predecessor in the Senate. 

Yet, Daniel Webster first announced the astounding dis- 
covery that the question which the wisest statesmen — himself 
among the number — had debated for years without reaching 
a decision, had been taken up outside by butchers, bakers and 
candlestick makers, and settled in favor of "the negative side." 
What a pity to waste so much ammunition after the war was 
over! To fight another battle of New Orleans and kill poor 



163 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Pakenham, and, that too by the Commander-in-Chief, who, we 
must infer, had read the popular pronuneiamento. 

Mr. Webster was a logician of great power. He knew the 
true from the false in logic. He was seemingly candid and 
above dissimulation. He appeared to be sincere in scorning 
resort to the arts of the demagogue. He spoke as if he 
despised pinchbeck jewelry and apples of Sodom. Give him 
a subject that embraces rugged Alps, to be scaled and leveled, 
and rayless caverns to be explored and illumined by the light 
of day, and those born with feeble vision can see their way. 
Give him a subject free from the gins and snares of partisan- 
ship, that does not arouse the greed of the Puritan; that is 
free from the wiles that tempt the conscience, give him a sub- 
ject devoid of sectional bias, that did not in the remotest de- 
gree envelop any interest of Massachusetts or New England, 
and give him time to train his Pegasus of thought, and he 
could treat it with impartiality, in a broad catholic spirit, and 
with ability surpassed by very few debaters or statesmen. But 
in any conjuncture, on any occasion, even when the Union was 
in jeopardy, and before his sublime self-sacrifice on March 
7th, 1850, if the financial interests of New England were in 
one scale and the interests of the other States were in the 
opposite scale, the wonderful resources of Webster's oceanic 
intellect were wrested by ambition, sectional pride and his 
personal benefit as estimated by him, in behalf of that little 
industrial group, at the head of which stood the original 
Puritan nursery that he adored. 

When forced by the scathing criticism of Hayne to at- 
tempt a defense of Massachusetts, rising to the height of a 
grandiloquent bluff, he exclaimed: **Mr. President, I shall 
enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. 
There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There 
is her history ; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, 
is secure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington and 
Bunker Hill, and there they will remain forever." What a 
lean, meagre, equivocating, halting, timorous index to a cyclo- 
pedia of crimes committed in the name of the God of mercy, 
and justice and love, that covers the records of a hundred 
years ! 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 163 

That euphonious bombast had been most artistically ar- 
ranged and measured by a devoted son compelled to take the 
witness stand in the highest tribunal on earth, to say what he 
could in behalf of his mother, whose hands, the listening 
judges knew as well as he, were so steeped in the blood of 
savages and saints, women and babes, Indians, Africans, and 
her own children that they would 

"The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
Making the green one red." 

* ' There is her history ; the world knows it by heart. ' ' True, 
indeed — and "pity 'tis, 'tis true." "Would it had been buried 
with her sacrosaints, Winthrop, Endicott, John Cotton, Cotton 
Mather and others whose malodorous memories taint even 
now the air about New England's triumphs as, for days after 
Waterloo, the odor of "rider and horse in one red burial blent," 
tainted all the glory of victory. 

"Boston, Concord, Lexington and Bunker Hill." How 
electic was the skillful, practiced eye of this loving son, in 
choosing these four brilliant gems from a ponderous casket 
loaded with paste, to decorate the hideous brow of his bloody 
Borgia mother! 

What a beggarly account and display of the accumulations 
of two centuries. He was touchingly modest, in view of the 
graves, gibbets, pillories, and judicial murders from which to 
choose a few specimen exhibits. He could have continued — 

"And there is Salem with her silent but eloquent string of 
gallows adorned with swinging Quakers — heroes and heroines 
all! And there, too, in this graveyard you behold her many 
testimonials to her celestial divination by which she detected 
the secret, midnight machinations of the Devil in imparting 
to old women and children his power to bewitch her pious and 
peaceful followers of the Lord. There in Boston, and near 
Faneuil Hall, stands the gallows from which that martyr to 
her religious Faith, Mary Dyer, gave up her life in the pres- 
ence of her own children and of the Puritan saints. There, 
too, you behold her temples dedicated to the worship of her 
confidential Lord, and before whose sacred portals stand her 
favorite ministers of justice, and efficient auxiliaries of her 



164 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

constabulary — her pillories, her bilboes, her stocks and gib- 
bets. 

"I have said there is Concord, — Yes, the only remaining 
monument that has survived one hundred and fifty years of 
perpetual Discord — discord with Indians; discord with all 
Quakers, Episcopalians, Baptist, Calvinistic and other heretics 
perpetually infesting her peaceful shores, which she had con- 
secrated as landings for her hundred ships laden with savage 
negroes "plucked as brands from the burnings" from darkest 
heathen Africa, to give them the incalculable blessing of the 
Puritans' incomparable and peculiar religion; discord with 
Kings and Queens; discord with England's naval officers who 
disapproved of the practice by her sons of the art of smug- 
gling introduced by them from the old world to the new. 
These, Mr. President, are but specimen bricks taken at ran- 
dom from the many pyramidal monuments standing as im- 
perishable witnesses to testify to the glory of Massachusetts. 
But I refrain to weary your patience with further recital of 
these details that stand like marble milestones along her bril- 
liant pathway, stretching over two hundred years of energy 
that benevolently extended, without rest, into the borders 
of her neighbors and sisters. With one other proof of her 
superior activity springing from the irrepressible love of un- 
trammeled personal libertj^ I shall leave with you and the 
country this brief index of the history of Massachusetts. 

"Without arrogance or boasting I affirm that Massa- 
chusetts, impelled by her spirit of liberty, has led her sister 
colonies and States in many of the useful activities of life, as 
well as on the line of useful inventions. She was the first to 
demonstrate her unconquerable hostility to tyranny by tear- 
ing down one of the market houses in Boston by what in this 
day is denominated a mob. It was only the action of a few 
Puritan sons who objected to the market, and they gathered 
together and adopted the readiest and least expensive method 
of removing what to them was objectionable. This high spirit 
has marked her industrious sons from that day to this. Those 
Puritan patriots were the first to inaugurate smuggling in 
resistance to the statute of Parliament which they imagined 
transgressed the bounds of personal liberty and of individual 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 165 

rights. Those Puritan Christian patriots were the first to dis- 
cover that the only effectual method to get rid of and to 
silence pestiferous Quakers who obstinately refused conform- 
ity to their eighty-nine articles of Faith, was to swing them 
from the gallows. They led their sister States in the discov- 
ery that Jesus Christ was no co-equal with the Father, indeed, 
was not Divine — and they improved and enlarged the borders 
of religion by establishing the doctrine of Unitarianism. 

''They, like the Athenians, were constantly on the watch 
for something new. When they realized that negro slavery 
was unprofitable, as they founded it, being sensitively con- 
scientious, they concluded it was their duty to abolish it from 
the Union, but, as the Constitution guaranteed it, that instru- 
ment seemed an insuperable obstacle in their way. Being, 
however, inventive and indefatigable, they began to investi- 
gate, and soon found, through fate and metaphysical aid — 
the means prescribed by Lady Macbeth for Macbeth to reach 
the "golden round" — that Providence had provided for them 
a ''higher Law" than the Constitution, and they are now 
working with the industry of a herd of hungry beavers, out- 
side and above that fundamental law, to give to the slave- 
holding States a modicum of the blessings of liberty enjoyed 
by themselves. Considering that the people of Massachusetts, 
at first, were all Puritans, and that those saints are still in 
control of her government and destiny, perhaps I should 
qualify by some measure of diminution the merit I have ac- 
corded to her in the two instances touching the discovery of 
Unitarianism and the 'Higher Law', because, Sir, as the Pil- 
grim Fathers were, and their descendants are, successors to 
the Israelites as God's chosen people, and are tlis vice-gerents 
over this world, and have always been in the closest confiden- 
tial relation and hourly communication with their Deity, it 
may be that He may have diffidently suggested the method of 
discovering the repository of the 'Higher Law.' 

"And, Mr. President, I should not omit to call attention 
to the superiority of the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers 
in that broad, intricate, entangling and metaphysical field de- 
nominated Finance. I need not do more in support, if not in 
demonstration, of their superior acumen as financiers, than 



166 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

to point to the vast aecumulation of riches within the borders 
of Massachusetts, and, indeed. Sir, of all New England. This, 
Sir, is due to the Puritans' discovery of the immeasurable 
wealth that the framers of the Constitution, in their foresight 
and beneficence in behalf of posterity, had enveloped and con- 
cealed in that magic phrase — 'general welfare', the 'Sesame' 
to which that investigating and philanthropic people around 
Plymouth Rock were so fortunate as to discover. 

"There remains but one more proof of the inventive genius 
of the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, to which I shall at 
present refer. While it does not lie within the expansive field 
of Finance proper, still, it is a legitimate offspring of that 
modern growth of wisdom and and chicanery. I mean that 
mental contrivance, compounded of many chances, which is 
denominated 'Dealing in Futures.' To the ingenious people 
of Massachusetts must be assigned all credit for the invention 
of this purely intellectual adjunct to Finance. It originated 
in Boston and grew out of her method of conducting the sale 
of her negro slaves, or rather her style of advertising negro 
slaves for sale. Not having before me the journal in which 
this innovation on the custom of sales appeared, I must be 
content to say that the owner of a negro wench, as he styled 
her, offered her and her child then unborn for sale, the pur- 
chaser to take both, or take the mother or child alone. It is 
readily seen that the purchaser of the child was 'dealing in 
futures' to the degree of recklessness — for the child might 
come blind, or deaf, or dumb, or epileptic, a paralytic, a crip- 
ple; or — I was about to say — a mulatto, but remembering 
that the transaction occurred in Boston, I saw, at once, the im- 
possibility of the woman giving birth to a mulatto at that 
period of Boston's Puritan virtues. 

"With one more remark I shall leave this feeble encomium 
of Massachusetts with you and the country. It is that the 
Puritans by adopting that new method of sales of personal 
property, introduced a new rule governing the validity of 
title. By the Common Law, one delivery of personal prop- 
erty is sufficient to vest title in the purchaser, whereas it is 
evident, even to the understanding of a layman, that in this 
case of 'dealing in futures' two deliveries were necessary in 
order to perfect the title." 



CHAPTER XXni. 
THE RIGHT OF SECESSION. 

Having shown the right of a nation to withdraw from any 
agreement of whatever name or obligation, and that each 
State in the Union in 1787 was a nation, we now come to the 
question of the right of the Southern States to secede from 
the Union in 1861. If the Law of Nations justifies secession in 
the abstract, it must follow, a fortiori, that the slave States 
had the right to secede should it appear that the free States 
had violated the agreement by which the thirteen States were 
united. As already said, it matters not what the agreement 
between the States is called — whether a convention, a com- 
pact, league, confederation or constitution. We are not pur- 
suing a shadow. We are considering substance. We have 
heretofore quoted Daniel Webster's fanfaronade on the word 
Constitution — "I will have the gentleman (Mr. Calhoun) to 
know that the Constitution is a noun substantive." It would 
perplex any "Yankee school-teacher" — or other teacher, or 
grammarian, to produce a noun that is not "substantive." 
Webster did not inform "the gentleman" what sort of noun 
is "compact, agreement, league, contract," or "confederation." 
He spoke as if the Constitution were clothed with the sanctity of 
the Ark of the Covenant, and that he was one of the Koha- 
thites to whom its safety was intrusted. This grandiloquence 
was indulged in in 1833. We soon shall see him in a different 
role, and hear him reduce his "noun substantive" to its com- 
mon-sense meaning — "a contract." 

We must now make a brief review of the action of the 
States and of the conduct of people of the Northern States 
from the formation of the Union to the election of Abraham 
Lincoln as President. It is not necessary to review the de- 
bates in the convention that framed the Constitution. Courts, 
without some special reason, never look behind a contract 
to see what was proposed and what was rejected by the 
parties thereto before signing. They look only at the con- 
tract — what the parties agreed to — and apply the law. On 



168 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

the forefront of the compact between the States they stated 
the reasons that moved them to form a Union — to-wit: "To 
establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide 
for the common defense, to promote the general Avelfare, and 
to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their 
posterity." And we are bound to assume, as a fact, just as 
judges in forming their judgments assume a fact as proven, 
or admitted, in open court, that the people of each State 
entered into that compact for the reasons so explicitly stated 
by them, and, second, that the reasons stated were the only 
inducement for forming a union, and, as a conclusion of law, 
that the attainment of each and all of those ends — five in 
number — constituted the only consideration moving each 
State to enter into the Union. This being unquestionably true, 
it follows that any voluntary action of any of the parties 
(States) to the compact that defeated the attainment of all, 
or any one of those considerations, was a breach of the com- 
pact and made it void, or voidable at the will of any of the 
innocent or unoffending parties. 

For more than a century before the Union was formed, 
negro slavery had been a social and labor institution in a ma- 
jority of the States, and was such in every State when the 
Constitution was adopted. It is history tnown of all men 
that the negro slavery subject caused more trouble in the con- 
vention that framed the Constitution than any other subject. 
It is, also, indisputable that unless negro slavery had been 
recognized and protected in express terms by the contract, or 
compact, the efforts of the convention would have been in 
vain, and there would have been no Union between the States. 
Negro slavery is recognized three times in the Constitution: 
First, in the apportionment of Representatives in Congress by 
including in the population of each State ''the whole number 
of free persons, including those bound to service for a term 
of years, and three-fifths of all other persons;" second, by 
limiting the importation of slaves to the year 1808 ; and, third, 
in Art. IV, Sec, II, Par. 3, that provides for deliverj^ to the 
master of fugitive slaves. These clauses were inserted to in- 
sure an agreement by the convention and adoption by the 
States. They were sine qua non. "Without them the Union 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 169 

•was impossible! These facts no man not an ignoramus, or at 
heart a despot, will deny. 

Only two more steps are needed to conclude this view of 
the right of the Southern States to secede in 1861. The first 
is to state the law. It is laid down by Vattel, 5th Ed., pages 
260-261, Sec. 296: "If it be certain and manifest that the 
consideration of the present state of things was one of the 
considerations that occasioned the promise — that the promise 
was made in consideration or in consequence of that state of 
things — it (the obligation of the promise) depends on the 
preservation of things in the same state. This is evident, 
since the promise was made only upon that supposition. 
When, therefore, that state of things which was essential to 
the promise, and without which it certainly would not have 
been made, happens to be changed, the promise falls to the 
ground when its foundation fails. * * * That state of 
things alone, in consideration of which the promise was made, 
is essential to the promise. Such is the sense in which we are 
to understand that maxim of the civilians — Conventio omnis 
intelligitur rebus sic stantibus — that is, "every agreement is 
to be construed according to surrounding conditions at the 
time it was made." 

The second step is to take a retrospect to determine whether 
the same state of things in relation to negro slavery existed 
in 1861 as in 1788, when the slave States agreed to the con- 
tract called the Constitution. The transition is the most start- 
ling and horrible known in any seventy years in the world's 
history. It is like passing from a lovefeast into pandemonium, 
like turning from the cheery music of Christmas bells to hear 
the ravings of maniacs chained in a madhouse. We will pause 
a moment to view the scene. We see the architects and build- 
ers of the last Temple of Freedom, with joyous faces, file out 
and pause on the Parian threshold on a golden day, while the 
sun throws his noonday splendors as a benediction upon them. 
Looking around on the seeming faultless sky they see just 
above the Northern horizon a small cloud not bigger than a 
man's hand. It wears an ominous portent. It holds the 
patriot's gaze. It has a perfidious aspect. Soon it begins to 
swell and take on a darker hue. It expands slowly with ser- 



170 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

pentine trail towards the east, then with tortuous movement 
to the west. As it grows, the darker it becomes. Soon a faint 
lurid flash is seen, as when the viper thrusts out its venomous 
tongue. As its dismal wings expand, its horrid crest by leaps 
and bounds invades the upper air now trembling at its dread 
approach. Now day is obscured, and thick, plunging billows 
of darkness roll and leap as when by fury the ocean's deep 
is seized and in masses thrown as a challenge in the face of 
Heaven. Over the sun is now spread the black veil — the sym- 
bol of death, and night is swallowmg up the day. 

Now a low grumbling sound breaks on the ear like the 
deep-throated menace of the lion disturbed in his midnight 
lair in a far off jungle. A sudden flash, making the darkness 
visible, leaps through the tumultuous, rushing gloom, leaving 
a momentary rift through which strangely demoniac figures 
appear. As we gaze, we doubt the faithfulness of our senses. 
"We see short-haired women and long-haired men rushing pell- 
mell from East to "West, then from "West to East, mounting 
platforms, pulpits, stumps, waving their arms like flails 
threshing grain — shouting — screaming — yelling, as if in agony 
from burning garments. "We see them raise high in the air 
children black as the surrounding cloud — kiss them — embrace 
them — and cry "freedom! freedom! freedom!" Rushing by 
comes a negro chased bj'' bloodhounds gnashing and tearing 
her clothes and flesh. A moment, and we hear the rumble of 
a train rushing along a subterranean way at midnight. We 
see it emerge, and its sable, mongrel cargo leap into the arms 
of the shouting, screaming, yelling short-haired women and 
long-haired men who cry "freedom! freedom! freedom!" 
Then the cargo is again stowed away and the train rushes 
on — on — into the regions of the frozen North. 

Suddenly, a lurid stream of light leaps from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific abreast the raging cloud, and, behold! it is re- 
solved into millions of human forms with faces black with 
envy, rage and malice, and then from out the West rises a 
figure — tall, unshapen, and gaunt; unknown to fortune and 
to fame, his origin a mystery, only recognized as one of a 
million fanatics. By this brand the images knew him and 
hailed him as Chief. From the cloud, adulation like a tempest 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 171 

burst upon him, and on it he rose and trod upon the necks 
supinely stretched, like Jupiter enthroned on Ol^^mpus, jest- 
ing with the vulgar, while pollution flowed from his lips, until 
a lightning bolt struck the Temple of Liberty, w^hich fell with 
a roar heard around the earth. Then followed a sound like 
a distant echo of the temple, and the Ruler of the storm bowed 
his head never to rise again. 

In the j^ear 1776 the thirteen colonies made their Declara- 
tion of Independence, to maintain which they pledged to each 
other their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. In 
the year 1778 they formed *'a league of friendship with each 
other for their common defense, the security of their liberties 
and their mutual and general welfare; binding themselves to 
assist each other against all force offered to, or attacks made 
upon them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any 
other pretense whatsoever." In the year 1787 they met again 
and made a third agreement, — ''to establish justice, insure 
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, pro- 
mote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty 
to ourselves and our posterity." 

As has been shown, in the third agreement the thirteen States 
made two special provisions for the security of that class of 
property known as negro slaves then owned by citizens of 
each State — the only kind of property thus recognized for 
protection, and the only property that delayed for many 
weeks the agreement. As the pledge of protection was neces- 
sary to a consummation of the agreement, and without it the 
Union could not have been formed, with honorable men that 
pledge would have been held more sacred than any other. The 
other provisions were matters of accommodation, of compro- 
mise, as could be easily demonstrated, while this one — protec- 
tion to this property, which had become a part of the social 
and economic condition of all the States; which, under con- 
trol, was contributing to the "general welfare," but, free 
and unrestrained, was known to be dangerous to and subvers- 
ive of "domestic tranquility" — was the indispensable prere- 
quisite to the contract. 

Yes — among men of honor, this obligation could not have 
been violated. Honorable men, who had sold these slaves to 



173 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Southern men and had invested the purchase money in stocks, 
bonds, mills and factories, and grown rich on that slave trade, 
would never have considered for a moment a proposition to 
wrest that property from the men they sold it to, nor from 
their children. 

Yes — honorable men, some of the slave traders who sold 
the slaves to the South, and who had inherited the stocks, 
bonds, mills, factories, and other property, purchased with 
that blood-money, and who were thereby living in ease, com- 
fort, luxury and splendor, would not have raised a finger nor 
spent a dollar to wrench that property from the children, who 
had committed no greater offense than holding what they had 
inherited. 

Yes — men of honor — saying nothing of Christian men — 
would never have repudiated the contract of their fathers and 
have refused to pay back that blood-money, and have hired 
Hessians to invade the homes of men who had paid to their 
fathers full price for the property — to shoot fathers and sons 
— impoverish wives and children — 'and to free slaves their 
fathers had made slaves of, and had been fattened by that in- 
famous piracy and traffic. 

Honorable men — sons of honorable men — would not repu- 
diate their fathers' contract by which they had reaped billions 
of dollars, and denounce their fathers as parties to "a cove- 
nant with Death and an agreement with Hell," and revel in 
the swag they had raked from "an agreement with Hell." 
These are acts no honorable men would have done. Let us 
now see what was done. To the first Congress assembled 
under the Constitution of 1787 a petition was presented asking 
for the abolition of negro slavery. That was followed by an- 
other and larger like petition to the second Congress. And 
there was no Congress, from the first to the one in 1859, that 
did not receive this petition. In vain did Congress pass Reso- 
lutions declaring that Congress had no jurisdiction over slav- 
ery. In vain did Congressmen tell their constituents that it 
was idle to send those petitions to Congress. In vain did Con- 
gress lay them on the table or order them to the wastebasket. 
Signatures multiplied by hundreds, then by thousands and by 
tens of thousands. By the year 1820, so fanatical on slavery 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 173 

had the Northern people become, that a bitter contest occurred 
in Congress over the admission of Missouri into the Union. 
The opposing forces were anti-slavery. The result was the 
memorable compromise — called the Missouri Compromise — 
that forbade negro slavery north of Missouri, or the parallel 
of 36° 30'. That bitter conflict divided the Union into two 
sections, ever since called The North and The South — a bap- 
tism ordained by Nature, and a divorce from bed and board 
compelled by Fanaticism, This was the first clanging of "the 
fire bell" dreaded so much and predicted by Thomas Jeffer- 
son. During the decade following 1820 the agitation at the 
North for abolition of slavery grew apace. A torch was 
thrown into the stubble by legislation forced through Con- 
gress by the avarice of the Puritans. It was the tariff law 
that South Carolina strenuously opposed, even to the verge of 
hostilities, by what was called Nullification. This brought on 
the celebrated debate in 1830 between Robert Y. Hayne of 
South Carolina and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts — the 
two most antipodal States in the Union. In that debate, for 
the first time after the Constitution was adopted, was the 
opinion announced, in solemn form, by any statesman, that a 
State had no right to secede from the Union. In 1833 the de- 
bate was resumed by Mr. Webster and John C. Calhoun, when 
Webster, emboldened by the fame won in the debate with 
Hayne, advanced a step further and proclaimed the law under 
and by virtue of the Constitution to be that Secession would 
be rebellion and revolution. 

Just here the path we are traveling can be greatly illum- 
ined by having light from the rear thrown upon it, as hunters 
at night the better see the game they are seeking. We are 
now in the year 1833. In a prior chapter we have learned 
that, from the day the Union by consent was formed, no man 
questioned the right of a State to secede. Washington and 
Hamilton — both Federalists — so believed. They considered 
the Union as tentative or an experiment. The people of New 
England so believed. Daniel Webster, we have seen, in the 
Framingham Resolutions addressed to President Madison, so 
contended. He wrote the Resolutions. The Hartford Conven- 
tion in 1814 so spoke. Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, made 



174 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

a speecli in the House of Congress in favor of the right of 
Secession. William Ellery Channing, one of New England's 
foremost divines, favored Secession to be rid of slavery. A 
Northern republic was advocated in New England to be com- 
posed of Free States. During these forty-six years this be- 
lief in peaceful and rightful secession prevailed throughout 
the Union. Now, apply again the rule "cotemporanea expo- 
sitio est optima" — the opinion of those cotemporaneous with 
any matter, event, or writing, the meaning of Avhich is in 
question, is the best evidence of its purpose or meaning — 
and, as the Constitution is absolutely negative on the ques- 
tion of secession, we are bound to accept the opinion of the 
men not only cotemporaneous with, but who took part in mak- 
ing, the compact or contract between the States. But as we 
proceed we shall get more of this light coming from the same 
source. "We resume the narrative from the year 1833. 

Mr. Webster won such renown by his arguments in the 
Dartmouth College case and in the case of Gibbons vs. Ogden, 
that he was crowned ''The Great Expounder of the Constitu- 
tion." This halo covered him in the debates with Hayne and 
Calhoun. Hence, the North greeted him with hosannas as he 
declared Secession nothing less than Rebellion and Revolution. 
His finesse, his assumption that the States were subordinate 
to the federal government, that the Constitution alone was the 
law, were questions beyond popular understanding, and his 
conclusion was accepted by the fanatics of the North on his 
ipse dixit. It was ex cathedra. Here was ground to stand 
upon. 

Between 1820 and 1833 the nebulous elements of anti-slav- 
ery had been gravitating towards a common centre. In 1835 
they began to unite in societies for the abolition of slavery, 
to agitate, to muster recruits. We have the record in the 
chapter on Daniel Webster that in the year 1837 there were 
societies organized and in full blast to propagate abolitionism 
throughout the Free States, and that they thereafter multi- 
plied in almost geometrical ratio. The members in that year 
were 158,000. To record a hundredth part of the deeds of 
those fanatics, even to catalogue their speeches, pamphlets, 
writings in the press, and sermons, to give the names of their 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 175 

speakers — male and female, and their places of meeting to 
portray the horrors of negro slavery their fathers had estab- 
lished in the South, would fill a large book. However, there 
are sufficient facts for future historians to base their de- 
cision on when they shall decide whether the South was more 
than justified in leaving the company she had accepted in 
1787 as life-companions, and a few of these facts will now be 
recorded. As they are a part of the country's history, well 
known and indisputable, no space need be given to references, 
to books and pages. 

One of the methods of campaigning was the establishment 
of the "underground railroad." Its freight was negro slaves 
only, escaped or stolen from their Southern masters. They 
were spirited away with hot haste to safe seclusion in North- 
ern States and to Canada. To insure a valuable cargo, emii- 
saries were sent through the South as sneak-thieves. Ofteri 
the Bible was used as the jimmy to unlock "the shackles and 
fetters the groaning slaves were dragging by day at his 
work." Colporteurs would saunter through the South osten- 
sibly selling Bibles. That holy mission gained admission to 
and hospitable entertainment in the best homes. They were 
sped with blessings and words of cheer tor their good work 
for the salvation of sinners. They meet a negro — talk of the 
horror of slaveiy — the glory, the ease, the luxury of freedom 
in their country. The negro is willing, a night rendezvous is 
agreed on, and they start post-haste to that land of freedoui 
and no work. Among the honest, trusting, unsuspecting 
Southerners the trick was turned "as easy as lying." The 
master, the next day, supposed as the worst that the negro 
had run away. He could not imagine that the Christian 
gentleman wearing his life out selling Bibles to redeem lost 
souls, had any possible connection with the absence of h^.s 
slave. Sometimes, but rarely, the pious thief was suspected, 
pursued and caught. In a few instances he was punished iii 
a manner that reminded him of the Quakers whom his sainted 
Pilgrim Fathers tied to cart-tails and whipped through three 
towns — not, however, for stealing, but for not taking off thei? 
hats. 



176 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

This method of stealing was on land, but the ocean on 
whose bosom the piracy of the negroes' ancestors was carried 
on by the Puritans, was not neglected. New England then 
monopolized the coastwise trade with the Southern States. 
This scheme was worked: Negroes, instead of white men, 
would be articled as sailors on ships coming to Southern 
ports. During the stay in port, unloading merchandise and 
loading cotton and rice, the negro sailors were in constant as- 
sociation with the stevedore's slaves. The Yankee negro 
would fill the slaves with all the good things in the land o£ 
Canaan — with its milk and honey — the grapes of Eschol — 
and no work — and at the hour of sailing stow them away 
below and the trick was turned. There was no telegraph to 
intercept and to order arrest at the Northern port. There 
was no remedy. Even the mighty "Sovereign" Federal Gov- 
ernment, with its army and navy could do nothing for the 
master. 

This method of stealing the property the Puritans had sold 
to Southerners was conducted to such an extent that the 
citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, felt compelled to have 
negro sailors arrested — put in jail — and held there until the 
hour for the ship to weigh anchor. This action, in self- 
defense, caused a protest by the people of Massachusetts. 
They sent Mr. George Hoar as commissioner to Charleston to 
call her citizens to account for ''incarcerating the free citizens 
of Massachusetts without authority of law." Mr. Hoar was 
made to understand that if Massachusetts or Boston, would 
send to South Carolina white men as sailors and keep their 
free negro sneak-thieves at home South Carolina's jails would 
not be burdened with negro sailors while in port. This incident 
made the municipalities at the other Southern ports more wary, 
and theft by stowing slaves was not so successful thereafter. 
But the underground railroads multiplied. Northern termini 
were established along the length of Mason and Dixon's line, 
and west of Missouri depositaries were chosen to receive the 
stolen slaves and to conceal or forward them further North. The 
Southern termini were afloat, or on foot, in every Southern 
State where the pious Bible colporteurs might wander. And 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 177 

there was more rejoicing, at each Northern terminus, over one 
negro saved by theft, than over ninety-nine thieves converted 
and saved from the gallows. 

This rebellion against the Constitution that guaranteed 
protection to slave property; this open, flagrant violation of 
the Commandment against stealing; this destruction of "do- 
mestic tranquility;" this fanaticism on slavery — successor to 
and continuation of the Puritan's fanaticism on religion, was, 
at first, among fanatics of the lower social order. It was a 
kitchen rebellion against all law and order. They played on 
the passions of the groundlings — the lowest stratum lying 
close to the negro. This is shown by the fact that William 
Lloyd Garrison, then in obscurity, who was printing a four 
page quarto sheet — in a back alley in Boston — called "The 
Liberator," was seized on the street in 1835 by a mob that 
resented his incessant caterwauling over the negro, and was 
dragged along a street by a rope around his neck. About the 
same time another garret editor, named Love joy, in southern 
Illinois, was attacked by a mob, his office destroyed, and he was 
killed. As the tide of fanaticism rose high in after years, his 
brother, Owen, mounted it and rode into Congress. 

Although the agitation for abolition started in the base- 
ment, it rapidly gained recruits. Daniel "Webster, in his 
speech at Plymouth Rock in 1820, said that at least a million 
sons of New England had migrated to the Western States. 
They went to teach, to seek fortunes, to grow up with the 
country. Being better educated than their pioneer neighbors, 
many were chosen as Congressmen. They went West as 
propagandists of all New England's ideas. Without statistics, 
we must assume that many hundred thousands of women, also, 
went from New England to the Western States, as wives and 
as teachers. Here was enough inflammable material to set. 
the prairies on fire, and to account for the rapid spread of 
the Abolitionists. In 1833 Great Britain freed her slaves iu 
the West Indies. The Puritans — who for two hundred years 
had never been capable of seeing any wisdom, justice or 
honor in any act of the British, or their Parliament or King — 
looking through the medium of fanaticism, saw justice in that 
emancipation, and were fired to follow in her footsteps. The 



178 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

omnipotence of Parliament to legislate on all matters, and the 
impotence of Congress to touch the institution of slavery; 
the protection guaranteed by the Constitution to slavery in 
the States; the sovereignty of the States that protected them 
from interference — ^were no obstacles in the way of fanatic- 
ism. The fact that Parliament paid the British slaveholders 
four hundred million dollars to compensate them for their 
property set free, and the fact that New England had gained 
billions of dollars from the South by sale of slaves to it, and 
by the increase of that purchase money, did not disturb the 
souls of the fanatics. 

"Fanaticism," says Dr. Isaac Taylor, "is enthusiasm in- 
flamed by hatred. It rushes on, it knows not whither." The 
Southern slave owners were hated by these fanatics. This is 
demonstrated by the vile epithets applied to the Southerners 
in their speeches, lectures, newspapers, and all kinds of liter- 
ature. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE LAW AND THE FACTS OF THE 

QUESTION. 

Did the Southern States have the right to secede from the 
federal Union? There are two views of this momentous ques- 
tion. The first involves law only; the second embraces both 
law and facts — that is, matters in pais. The first can be de- 
termined by the Law of Nations; the second must be decided 
by the same law and the facts, or the political condition exist- 
ing between the States in 1861. The first view can be confined 
to the law as it was in 1804, when the 12th amendment to the 
federal constitution was adopted, because from that date to 
1861 no change in the law affecting the relations of the States 
was made. On the first branch of the question an extended 
argument is not needed, because much of the law has already 
been herein presented. Still, on account of the importance 
of the result to be attained, some of the law hitherto stated 
must be repeated. The second branch will require more space, 
as much of the history made by the Northern or Free States 
must be recited. 

When Great Britain declared each of the States — then, as 
now, called ''United States," naming them from New Hamp- 
shire to Georgia — "to be Sovereign, Free and Independent," 
all the States were confederated under an agreement called 
"Articles of Confederation." In and by the second Article 
each State declared emphatically that she was "free, sovereign 
and independent." The thirteen States on that understand- 
ing proceeded to form what they named "a league of friend- 
ship." To prove what they said, it is best to let them speak. 
The first article reads — "The style of this confederacy shall 
be The United States of America." 

Article II. "Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom 
and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right 
which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the 
United States in Congress assembled." 



180 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Article III. "The said States hereby severally enter into 
a firm league of friendship with each other for their common 
defense, the security'' of their liberties, and their mutual and 
general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other 
against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or 
any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any 
other pretense whatever," 

There are several rules courts apply in construing all in- 
struments in writing of whatever nature. One to be applied 
now and throughout this discussion, is of such general use 
among civilized peoples that it may be ranked as one of the 
Laws of Nations. It is — " Contemporanea expositio est op- 
tima" — the understanding of the meaning of any writing or 
custom of those who were contemporaneous with the writing 
or custom is the best evidence of its meaning. Apply this 
rule to the Articles of Confederation. We are to assume that 
they meant what they said, as there is no ambiguity in any 
word they wrote. What did they mean by the words "each 
State retains?" One can not retain what he has not. But 
each State retained its sovereignty, freedom and independ- 
ence, and every power, jurisdiction and right. Here are two 
separate classes of attributes spoken of. The first three are 
sovereignty, freedom and independence, connected and united 
into one group by the copulative conjunction "and;" the 
next three, while connected by the same conjunction, are dis- 
severed and singularized by the word "every" — every power, 
every jurisdiction and every right. This is not only proven 
by using the word "every," but is doubly proven by the sin- 
gular verb "is," of which every power, etc., is the nomina- 
tive. 

Again: "Every power," etc., "which is not by this con- 
federation expressly" — given away? granted to? — no! "ex- 
pressly delegated to" — what? To the United States? Far 
from it, — but "to the United States in Congress assembled!" 

Again: In the last paragraph, before their attestation, 
the delegates wrote — "Know ye. That we the undersigned 
delegates in the name and behalf of our respective constitu- 
ents" * * *" and we do further solemnly plight and engage 
the faith of our respective constituents." Then they signed — 



TRUE VINDICATION 01^ THE SOUTH 181 

"On the part and behalf of the State of New Hampshire;" 
every delegate repeating those words before the name of his 
State. 

As in a prior chapter the meaning of ''delegated" was 
given, no words are required here to show the wide difference 
between it and the word "granted." Few words in English 
are more distinctive. A person grants by title, and the thing 
granted is no longer his; he delegates the exercise of power 
or authority that remain in him. 

It is true that the Articles of Confederation were agreed 
to by the State five years before they won their independence, 
but when subjects revolt against their sovereign, as did the 
thirteen colonies, and they declare themselves to be free and 
independent, when they succeed, by the Law of Nations their 
freedom relates back to the date of their declaration. There- 
fore, we must assume that when the Confederation was formed 
the people of each St^te believed their State was sovereign, 
as they declared, and that the people of each State were, from 
1783, absolutely sovereign. So it appears by the plain and ex- 
plicit language written in the Articles of Confederation, — 

First: That each State was a distinct society, known in 
the Law of Nations as a nation. 

Second: That each State, as a nation, entered into the 
agreement to form a Confederation. 

Third : That each State announced its sovereignty. 

Fourth: That each State expressly declared its purpose 
to remain as sovereign while in the Confederation as it was 
before becoming a member of that "league of friendship." 

Fifth : That each State declared that it only delegated to 
the United States, in Congress assembled, the power to exer- 
cise the powers, jurisdiction and right of each State named in 
the Articles of Confederation. 

Sixth: That each State emphasized its separate action by 
using the word "severally," and the words "each other" in 
the third Article. 

Seventh: That one of the reasons for forming the con- 
federation was to make common cause against "all attacks 
upon them or any of them on account of sovereignty," etc. 



182 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Eighth: Another reason was to resist any attack on any 
of them on account of religion. 

The Nationalists' contention (and by it they must stand 
or fall) is, that the consolidated Nation was formed by the 
Articles of Confederation, which was afterwards renovated 
and called the Constitution; that sovereignty was granted to 
the United States, which they construe to mean and to be the 
federal government. If so, will they explain what the States 
or people meant by a common defense of the Confederation's 
"religion?" They assert that the Confederation had, and 
that its successor, the United States, have sovereignty. But 
how about the Confederation's religion? Can they explain 
how a corporation can get religion — can be "converted"; 
what spiritual relation a corporation has with its Maker — 
whether the Maker be the New Jersey legislature or thirteen 
States, or "We, the people?" 

When we see the Confederation as the States or the peo- 
ple of each State saw it, we can understand whose religion 
and whose sovereignty were to be defended. We can under- 
stand what thirteen men all named Smith, or Hercules — each 
with a large family — mean when they pledge themselves "to 
assist each other against all the attacks made on any of them 
on account of his religion. This comment on the word "re- 
ligion" is made, because, being one of the things each State 
was to assist any other State in defending, and being con- 
nected directly with "sovereignty" in the same sentence, it 
is proof of whose sovereignty each State, or the people of each 
State, had in mind. The States, in Articles of Confederation, 
entrusted the management of their affairs to a Congress. It 
was Executive, Legislative and Judiciary. Each State sent 
Delegates — none sent less than two nor more than seven — and 
no delegate could serve more than three years, and each 
State could "recall" her delegates at any time within the 
year and send others. Article V is illuminating on the pur- 
pose of the States as well as on what they meant by the phrase 
"United States." It reads: "For the more convenient 
management of the general interests of the United States, 
delegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as the 
Legislature of each State shall direct, to meet in Congress." 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 183 

What possible "general interests" had or could have the 
United States as an organization distinct and separate from 
the "general interests" of each State? There were not and 
there can not possibly be any general interests other than 
those of human beings — either singly or in association. What 
human beings were there to constitute the United States? 
There can not possibly be sovereignty without people under 
it, or constituting it. Therefore, the "general interests" were 
those of the several sovereign States, and the United States in 
Congress assembled was nothing more than the delegates each 
State chose in the manner it might adopt, and whom the 
States could recall at will. 

The Confederation became operative March 2nd, 1781, 
when the first Congress met. This was two years before the 
war ended and Great Britain acknowledged each State to be 
sovereign, free and independent, what each State had claimed 
in the Articles of Confederation, to say nothing of their claim 
in the Declaration of Independence. The Confederation con- 
tinued until it was superseded by the Union organized in con- 
formity to the Constitution in 1788. It proved to be a lame 
and impotent conclusion. It was ill constructed. It was a 
botch. Independence being won, each State, being sovereign 
in fact and not merely in theory, or on paper, began to pay 
more attention to its own affairs, and neglected the obliga- 
tions of the league of friendship. Taxes were shunned; the 
public debt was pressing ; the infidelity of some States became 
intolerable, and, finally, the statesmen and men of honor and 
of foresight decided that another confederation was neces- 
sary in order to make sure the blessings of life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness for them and their posterity. 

This sketch of the Confederation brings us to what was 
done in pursuance of the opinions of those wise men who saw 
the necessity of forming what they called "a more perfect 
Union" — a phrase not very apt, as the federation was about 
as imperfect as any known in modern history. Still, while 
the phrase is not up to the standard of Lindley Murray's 
grammar, its deficiency in that respect makes it a most valu- 
able and perfectly reliable witness to prove what the framers 
of the new government intended to do. Here is a declaration 



184 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

in most solemn form that Union of the States and Confedera- 
tion of the States were employed as equivalent terms. The 
States were in the Confederation at the date these words — "a 
more perfect Union" — were written, and to form a Union 
more perfect was equivalent to saying "this Union is to be 
better than the Union we are in now called a confederation." 
Whether the several thirteen separate and distinct societies 
from New Hampshire through to Georgia were each sovereign 
when they entered into a confederation before they achieved 
their independence of Great Britain, is not of so much im- 
portance in this discussion as is the written record that each 
declared itself to be sovereign, and with that distinct under- 
standing on the threshold, agreed to the stipulation thereafter 
written. 

Further, each one declared in the same breath that it in- 
tended to retain its sovereignty. Again, they said, each and 
all, that they only delegated to their common agent the exer- 
cise of some of their sovereign powers. Finally, there is not 
a clause, sentence, or word in all the Articles that is in con- 
flict with those three declarations. Therefore, we not only 
have the right to assume, but we are compelled to admit, that 
the Confederation was formed by thirteen sovereigns. But, 
if any question could be raised against that conclusion, cer- 
tainly no doubt can be thrown on the sovereignty of each 
State when Great Britain released her bond of allegiance to 
her and announced to the world the sovereignty of each — 
calling each by name. That this political supremacy con- 
tinued from 1783 to 1787, when they adopted the new Con- 
federation under the same name of United States, no man has 
ever had the hardihood to question, and no statesman, if 
honest, could doubt. 

From these facts of history we find thirteen States sover- 
eign by their own declaration in 1778 ; we find the same States 
declared by their former sovereign king, in 1783, to be as 
sovereign as he was, and we find the same States holding their 
sovereignty from 1783 to 1788. The next question is — did 
they surrender that sovereignty by forming another federa- 
tion called a Union? This brings us to view what they said 
in the new agreement. While considering this question we 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 185 

must look through the agreement itself to know what the 
thirteen sovereigns said, and we must take with us that code 
of laws made by enlightened Nations, which is not only the 
supreme law of mankind, but is so absolute in authority that 
no nation can possibly escape it. No agreement, compact, 
federation, or treaty made by two or more sovereigns can 
change, or disavow the Law of Nations. Each of the thirteen 
sovereign States was in a compact, with its obligations and 
duties, when they signed the agreement called the Constitu- 
tion. Did they cease to be sovereign by making that agree- 
ment? As they were unquestionably sovereign before they 
made it, the affirmative that they lost their status as sover- 
eign nations must be sustained by those who so assert. The 
contention that they did not — that they are to-day what they 
were in 1783 — has been presented in several prior chapters — 
one on State-Rights, the other on Sovereignty. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE QUESTION AS VIEWED IN 1787. 

To get a correct view of the rights of the States we must, 
first, stand in the year 1787, and look at the question as it 
was viewed then; and, second, we must read the Constitution 
as its full text was after the first ten amendments were added. 

In the first view we see how the Constitution was under- 
stood by the statesmen who framed and adopted it ; and from 
the second we get the covenant, agreement, compact, or bar- 
gain — (the name is immaterial) — that was entered into by the 
States. We then apply the law governing the judicial construc- 
tion of that and similar writings, and decide what the intent 
and purpose of its makers were when they agreed to it, and, 
two years after, amended it. 

That there were thirteen sovereign States no rational mind 
can question. The statesmen who acted to send deputies to 
Philadelphia to take counsel together and to draw up an agree- 
ment to be submitted to the States for approval or rejection, 
knew that the people of each State acted for and by themselves. 
And the deputies so knew, because they signed the paper they 
agreed to as from and representing separate States. Washington 
signed — ' ' George Washington, deputy from Virginia. ' ' And the 
others wrote first the name of the State they were from and 
signed their names thereunder. When these deputies adjourned 
the Convention, they returned to their respective States and 
submitted the writing to the legislatures of the States. Each 
legislature then issued a call to the people, the citizens and 
voters, of the State to select delegates to a convention repre- 
senting all the people of the States in their sovereign character 
and capacity, to consider and decide whether they would accept 
or reject the proposed Constitution. Then a Convention was 
held in each State, no two States acting at the same time or 
place, and the Constitution was ordained, ratified and adopted. 
We have here, so far, the history of the action of the people 
who framed and adopted the Constitution. We thus know what 
they did. We will next see what they said. The best evidence 
of what they said is in the writing they signed — the Constitution 
itself. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 187 

After proclaiming to the world, in five lines, called the pre- 
ample, the objects they hoped to accomplish, the first thing said 
was a declaration that recognized the States — "All legislative 
powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the 
United States" — ^not in the people, not in a legislature — but in 
a Congress. What is the meaning of Congress? Webster says 
(definition 5) : "An assembly of envoys, commissioners, depu- 
ties, etc., particularly a meeting of sovereign princes, or of the 
representatives of several courts, for the purpose of arranging 
iiiternational affairs." The prime arid paramount object of the 
States in forming the federal government was to ' * arrange inter- 
national affairs" — things' that each State acting alone could 
not do as well as all acting together through a common agent. 
"A meeting of sovereigns for the purpose of arranging inter- 
national affairs." Senators are called ambassadors from the 
States. Here is a recognition of States united, but each to act 
as a sovereign and to send Eepresentatives, and each two 
Senators who will meet in a Congress to legislate for the benefit 
of the States, or the people therein. No single State or sov- 
ereignty had ever called its legislative body a congress, but 
assemblages of ambassadors, envoys or other representatives of 
sovereigns had often been called Congresses. 

The next section prescribes how this Congress shall be com- 
posed and chosen. It is composed of Representatives chosen 
by each State — the number being apportioned by the number 
of inhabitants in each State, and of Senators chosen by the 
legislature of each State; two from each State; which number 
can not be increased nor diminished, nor shall any State at any 
time be without a Representative. 

"No person shall be a Representative who shall not when 
elected be an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be 
chosen." This is one of the most important of State rights. 
It rules out carpetbaggers. The third paragraph declares that 
the Union is not composed of "We, the people." It reads: 
"Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among 
the several States which may be included within the Union." 
The Union is composed of States — as political corporations, or 
autonomies; that is, as sovereigns. 



188 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

(Par. 4.) When vacancies occur in the House of Represen- 
tatives the State fills the vacancy. The United States govern- 
ment has no lot or part in getting Representatives in Congress. 

(Sec, 3, Par. 1.) Each State elects its two Senators. When 
a vacancy occurs the Governor may fill the vacancy until the 
legislature may elect a Senator. Here the U. S. Government 
has no voice. And should the legislature refuse to act, the 
government has no power to choose a senator. 

"No person shall be a senator * * * who shall not, 
when elected, be an inhabitant of the State for which he shall 
be chosen." 

(Sec. 8.) "The Congress shall have power — 

First. To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imports, and Ex- 
cises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and 
general welfare of the United States." Here is recognition of 
the States, as States. "To pay debts of the United States" 
means the debts of each State incurred during the seven years* 
war. There were no United States when the Constitution was 
written, and, of course, no debts of the United States. "To pay 
the debts and provide for the common defense and general 
welfare of the United States" means of the States when united. 
"The common defense can not be applied to one thing, person 
or people. It means defense of all the States, nine or more, that 
may be united under this Constitution. The same construction 
applies to the words "general welfare." 

Second. "To borrow money on the credit of the United 
States ;" that is, on the credit of each State of the States united. 
"The United States" is nothing more than a Trust Corporation, 
a body politic, an imaginary thing, having nothing, owning 
nothing, and holding public lands, buildings, ships, docks, etc., 
as trustee for the several States, Were the people, by vote of 
three-fourths of the States, to abolish the federal or confed- 
erate government, the forty-eight States would come into pos- 
session, as tenants in common, of all the general government 
now holds in trust. 

Third. ' ' To provide for calling forth the militia to execute 
the laws of the Union, suppress insurrection and repel inva- 
sions." 

The Union of what? Of the government of the United 
States? There can be no union of a single object, or thing, as 



TRUE VINDICATION 0¥ THE SOUTH 189 

is a government. The laws of the Union — that is, laws made 
by the States in Union or united. 

Again: "To repel invasions." A corporation — a body 
politic — can not be invaded. An invasion must be of something 
corporal. There must be land or water. A State owns land and 
can be invaded, but a government can not be invaded. The 
thing founded on the Constitution is a government and nothing 
more. Article IV, Section IV, explains that this paragraph 
means to protect each State from invasion. 

Fourth. ''To make all laws which shall be necessary for 
carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other 
powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the 
United States." Vested in the government; that is, vested in 
the government, or common agent, herein provided for by the 
several States united. The United States, or States united, the 
States that may agree to this writing or compact, do hereby 
vest these powers in a government to be known as the United 
States. 

Section IX contains the inhibitions of powers to the govern- 
ment and to the Congress. 

Section X denies to each or any State the exercise of certain 
powers, most of which the States, in a prior section had given 
the Congress (that is, the States acting together) the right to 
exercise. 

Article II provides exclusively for the Executive Department, 

First. The States hold the commanding "right" to appoint 
the men, or electors, who shall elect the President of the United 
States. Without their action there is no President, no judiciary 
and no government. 

Second. The States refuse to let a Senator or Representa- 
tive, or any person holding any office under the government of 
the United States, be an elector to elect a President. 

Third. Should no one having a majority of the electoral 
vote for President, the States hold the right to elect a President, 
each State having but one vote. In that event the smallest 
State is the equal of the largest and most populous. Rhode 
Island is the equal of New York. This is a very important State 
right. 



190 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Article III relates to the Judicial Department. 

Section 1, Par. 2. In a suit in which a State is a party the 
Supreme Court only can take jurisdiction. And by Article XI 
of the first twelve amendments to the Constitution, the States 
reserved the right to be exempt from suit by citizens of another 
State, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign State. This is 
a right that belongs to every sovereign. It is worthy of note 
that the States ratified the Constitution with a clause giving 
federal courts jurisdiction over a State at the suit of citizens 
of another State, and they withdrew that derogation of a sov- 
ereign's right within two years. It was resumed — not by "We, 
the people," — but by the separate action and vote of three- 
fourths of the States. 

Article V is the most significant of all on State rights. It 
provides the method for amending the Constitution. Three- 
fourths of the States agreeing can amend it to any extent, and 
Mr. Webster admitted, in the speech under review, that three- 
fourths of the States could abolish the government of the United 
States by their votes. 

As soon as the government was organized the Congress, 
composed, of course, of citizens of the thirteen States, seeing 
danger to the States as the Constitution then read, proposed to 
the States twelve amendments, which were adopted by the States 
at once. 

The first article of these amendments forbids Congress to 
legislate either to establish a religion or to prohibit the free 
exercise thereof; or to abridge freedom of speech, or of the 
press, or the right of petition. 

Article 11 guarantees the right to bear arms. 

Article III forbids quartering soldiers in people's houses. 

Article IV guarantees against unreasonable searches and 
seizures. 

Article V provides for indictments; against being in jeop- 
ardy twice for the same offense; against any person's being 
compelled to be a witness against himself; or deprived of life, 
liberty or property without due process of law; and against 
taking private property for public use without just compen- 
sation. 

Article VI guarantees a speedy and public trial by an im- 
partial jury; to be informed of the nature and cause of the 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 191 

accusation; to be confronted by the witnesses against him; to 
have compulsory process to get his witnesses, and to have a 
lawyer to defend him. 

Article VII relates to civil suits and right of trial by jury. 

Article VIII forbids excessive bail or fines and cruel and 
unusual punishments. 

Here are twenty-six invaluable rights and exemptions se- 
cured to each citizen in every State. The ninth Article reads : 
"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall 
not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the 
people." They are individual rights. 

Articles X and XI relate to the rights of States as sov- 
ereigns. 

Article X. ' * The powers not delegated to the United States 
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are 
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Never 
were words more aptly chosen to express with crystal clear- 
ness what the writer intended. "Reserved to the States respec- 
tively;" that is, to each and all States alike — as if they were 
tenants in common. 

I have already spoken of Article XI as proof of the jealous 
care with which each State was guarding its sovereign attri- 
butes, which Mr. Webster contended that the people, as one 
body, had so lavishly showered on their agent as to destroy 
their sovereignty and become dependencies or vassals. 

The twelfth and last amendment, as already stated, was an 
assertion of sovereignty that, at first thought, seems to over- 
throw the equality of representation. It is that, when electors 
fail to elect a President, the House of Representatives shall 
chose, and in doing so, each State shall have but one vote. 
This is an application to our government by States of the 
principle in the laws of nations, that the least kingdom, or 
sovereignty, or sovereign, is the equal of the greatest. As 
one authority puts it — "A dwarf is as much of a man as giant; 
a small republic is no less a sovereign state than the most 
powerful kingdom." Under the twelfth Article the thirteen 
States agreed, and by written compact declared, that, as a 
State, Rhode Island is as great as New York. No higher claim 
ox sovereignty can be made. 



192 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

During forty years preceding the war of Abolition, "State 
Eights" was on the tongue of every man in public service. 
Two schools of constructionists that arose during Washing- 
ton's administration have been in hostile array to the present 
time. One has persistently struggled to enlarge the powers 
of the federal government, while the other has endeavored to 
keep the government within the bounds set for it by the letter 
of the law. At first, they were known as Federalists ana 
Republicans ; next as "Whigs and Democrats, and, last, as Demo- 
crats and Republicans. The Federalists, led by Alexander 
Hamilton, pitched their tent on the soft, elastic, amorphous 
preamble and the ''general welfare" clause. The Democrats 
(the first Republicans) camped on the solid, rigid, unequivo- 
cal letter of the compact and have never moved from that 
position. The Federalists, Whigs and Black Republicans (as 
the present party was called), endeavored, from the first ad- 
ministration, by latitudinous construction to wrest the lan- 
guage of the Constitution so as to promote sectional and indi- 
vidual gain. The Republicans (as Democrats were first called), 
and Democrats ever since, contended for strict construction 
and for no sectional or individual advantage. The one looked 
to the federal government above the States; the other con- 
sidered every State as superior to the federal government, 
and hence arose the contention for federal authority over the 
States by one and for State rights by the other. 

This issue, from the beginning, divided the Union into 
sections, and negro slavery, soon after the division began, 
widened the breach until only two sections were spoken of — 
the North and the South. "State rights" was the South 's 
special doctrine, as the expression went, and as slavery was 
limited then to the South, the animosity of the North to the 
South was so bitter that the word "State-rights" was despised 
by the Northern people, because, being a Southern doctrine, 
it was associated with slavery. To speak of State-rights in 
Congress, or at the hustings, North, was the signal for smiles, 
jeers, guffaws, burlesque or ridicule. So far had self-interest 
(that is Protection) seduced the Northern people from the 
Golden Rule and blinded them to justice, and "their sacred 
honor," that they not only hated the Southerners, but they 
hated the word "State-rights," and did not think that stealing 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 193 

a negro was theft. As greed was the second strongest of all 
the Puritan's desires, he estimated the Union, or the govern- 
ment under the Union, in dollars and cents. He soon learned 
that the States had no bounties to bestow and that each man 
had to depend on his own energy, skill, labor and hands. And 
he soon saw that when Congress was legislating to raise money, 
it was as easy as lying to add a little more as a rider that 
foreign competitors would have to pay at the custom house 
in order to sell their wares in America. That little rider 
would be that much cash in their pockets without as much 
labor as winking the eye. What magician, what Fairy, what 
ring, or lamp, has ever brought in imagination to princess, or 
queen, such fabulous wealth as that lying juggler, Protection, 
has stolen through hypocrisy and fraud from the common 
people of the States and stealthily sluiced into the pockets of 
Manufacturers? And this sluice has been running as steadily 
as Time for one hundred years, and a people who boast of 
their courage and manhood have held up their hands to be 
robbed and have tamely submitted ! It is not the subject of a 
moment's wonder that the North, seventy years ago, decided 
to uphold the general government, and to ignore the States and 
to consider all States as merged into the United States govern- 
ment. That master passion of the Puritans — Greed, Avarice, 
Covetousness — a passion, that for a hundred and fifty years 
challenged the wild Atlantic to combat, from New England to 
Africa, for ownership of cargoes of negro slaves, was a solvent 
for any obstacle that the States might interpose between it and 
its real Eldorado. 

State rights a myth? States subordinate to their creature, 
the federal government? We have seen written all over the 
face of the Constitution what the makers thought and said 
of State rights, and what they thought of the government to 
be erected on the Constitution. With one more view of what 
the framers of that instrument were thinking, I shall close 
this presentation of State rights. 

The thirteen States framed the Constitution. The thirteen 
States organized the federal government. The thirteen States 
gave the law by which they, the States, and they only, can 
alter, add to, or take from that Constitution. By that law 
they did not invent the Congress nor all the departments of 



194 TRUE VINDICATION 0¥ THE SOUTH 

the federal government acting together, with power to alter, 
amend or even to touch the Constitution; nor was this power 
given to the people, as there were no people but those who 
were speaking and writing the words in the Constitution. They 
provided that three-fourths of all the States can add to, take 
from or abolish altogether the Constitution. But it is nowhere 
provided by word or implication that the federal government 
can alter, add to, take from, or abolish the Constitution of 
any State. The power to abolish was admitted by the "Great 
Expounder of the Constitution" in his debate with Mr. Cal- 
houn. And whatever Mr. Webster admitted in that debate 
against the position he assumed and against the interests of 
his constituents, against New England and against the purse 
of his clients, I doubt that any statesman will question or 
deny. 

Thus it is seen as clear as language can make any 
declaration : 

First. That the States, as States, created the federal 
government. 

Second. That the States only can alter the Constitution — 
the only foundation the federal government rests on. 

Third. That the States can, at will, abolish the Constitu- 
tion, and, ex necessitate rei, destroy the entire superstructure 
which is the federal government. 

Fourth. That the federal government, the creature, has 
no power to impair or to destroy a State government — its 
creator. 

Fifth. That if the federal government had power to de- 
stroy one State, it, a fortiori, would have power to destroy 
all the States. But the federal government, by destroying 
the States, would destroy itself, as its vitality and existence 
depend on the voluntary support of a majority of the States. 
It has already been shown how the federal government by non- 
action of the States, can be destroyed, and, ''like the baseless 
fabric of a vision, leave not a rack behind." 

Sixth. That the federal government, having no powers or 
attributes that the States can not withdraw, at will, is in no 
particular a sovereignty, and as a corollary it follows : 

Seventh. That in creating the federal government, not one 
attribute of sovereignty passed from the creator to the 
creature. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH lf5 

Eighth. That each of thirteen sovereigns having agreed to 
create a common agent for their common benefit and welfare, 
and each having retained all its sovereign attributes, the 
agreements thus made by the laws of nations governing the 
action of the sovereigns was a compact. 

Ninth. By the Law of Nations, when a compact is entered 
into by several sovereigns and no time is named for its duration, 
the compact is terminable by any one of the sovereigns at 
will, just as the law regulating co-partnerships permits a 
partner to withdraw. If, however, injury be done to the other 
party, or parties, to the compact, by the withdrawal or seces- 
sion, the party seceding is bound to make ample and full 
reparation. This right of withdrawal is an inalienable attribute 
of sovereignty. 

Tenth. It follows from the foregoing premises that the 
Southern Sovereign States, on seceding from the Union made 
by the compact in 1787, only put into execution a power in- 
herent to and inseparable from sovereignty. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

SECESSION A CONCRETE AS WELL AS AN 
ABSTRACT RIGHT. 

I have discussed the questions of State-rights; of the sov- 
ereignty of each of the States ; of the total lack of sovereignty 
in the federal government; and of the inalienable right of a 
sovereign — whether a man, a nation or a republic — to with- 
draw from a compact formed with other sovereigns, but under 
the obligation imposed by the laws of nations to make 
reparation to the co-compactors for any loss to them that the 
withdrawal may cause. This obligation flows from the duty of 
every sovereign to do justice to every nation and every indi- 
vidual. The last view was presented to show the unquestion- 
able right of the Southern States to secede from the compact 
of 1787, with the obligation on them to make reparation to the 
States remaining in the Union for any loss they may have 
sustained. The abstract right to secede being established, I 
purpose in this chapter to show, a fortiori, their right in the 
concrete, that is to say, their abstract right to secede not only 
justified, but made a duty by the injustice and the remediless 
wrongs done the South by the Northern people and by the 
Northern States. 

To those who were not acquainted with the people who 
made up the States of the American Union, but who knew that 
the colonies. North and South, were from England, and that 
both made loud professions of Christian brotherhood and love 
of liberty, the spectacle they beheld in the States in the year 
1861 must have shaken their faith in the rule of democracy, 
and have sunk the Christian religion to the level of 
Mohammedanism, 

As to those who knew that the colonists in New England 
were fanatics on religion, were avaricious to the degree of 
making slaves of what they call their fellowmen and their 
equals to get money, were cruel to their own race to the extent 
of taking life on difference of opinion on metaphysical ques- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 197 

tions, had stocked the Southern colonies with negro slaves, and 
were in 1861 invading the Southern States to free the negro 
slaves they had sold to the South without offering to pay back 
a dollar of the price they had received, — the dead on the bat- 
tlefield, the flames licking to ashes homes two centuries old, 
and the flight of the women and children by night, must have 
convinced them that the invaders, as they were not all lunatics, 
were moving under an impulse more powerful than any known 
religion, idealism, idol worship, or common hatred. The 
power of 

"Mammon led them on — 
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From Heaven ; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts 
Were always downward bent, admiring more 
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold. 
Than aught divine, or holy, else enjoyed 
In vision beatific." 
Those who had studied the course of the Puritans in 
England — more vagrant than that of the wandering Ulysses; 
as turbulent as the traitorous Catiline, and as much more pesti- 
lent as things spiritual are above things secular — a few zealots 
striving to force on England a religion they did not wholly 
embrace, and which had no better definition than hostility to 
all other religions; those who kept step with them after they 
got command in Massachusetts Bay; who saw their imitation 
of and improvement on Bishop Laud's methods of persecution 
and punishment ; the hanging of men and women not for heresy 
but for nonconformity; their fleets of slave ships plying be- 
tween Massachusetts, Ehode Island, Connecticut and Africa — • 
ballasted with rum going, freighted to the gunwales with negro 
slaves coming; who watched the violation of their plighted 
faith and oaths to support the Constitution ; who saw them by 
deliberate legislation nullify the fugitive slave laws of Con- 
gress; who witnessed the operation of the underground 
railroad loaded with property stolen from Southerners; who 
saw Abraham Lincoln seek anxiously the Presidency at the 
hands of a mob whose avowed purpose to free the slaves 
Lincoln knew and had known for many years, and who heard 
him proclaimed elected in November, 1860 — those disinterested 



198 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

spectators would have justly denounced the men of the South 
as cowards and degenerates, if they had not seceded. 

Mr. "Webster submitted four propositions in reply to Cal- 
houn which he contended to be the law of the Constitution. 
The first and second I have already discussed. The fourth 
bears directly on the question I am now considering, and is as 
follows : 

"That an attempt by a State to abrogate, annul or nullify 
an act of Congress, or to arrest its operation within her limits 
on the ground that in her opinion such law is unconstitutional, 
is a direct usurpation of the just powers of the general govern- 
ment and of the equal rights of other States ; a plain violation 
of the Constitution and a proceeding essentially revolutionary 
in its character and tendency." 

"I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word!" A quo- 
tation worn from use, but a bit too palpable, here, to be 
overlooked. If this master of words, by prophetic vision had 
seen what the legislatures of eleven Northern States did after 
that speech, by passing acts expressly to nullify the act of 
Congress called the "Fugitive Slave Law", his language, just 
quoted, is the very best he could have employed to define the 
"revolutionary character" of the legislation of those States. 
The Constitution has this clause; Art. IV, Sec. 2, Par. 3. "No 
person held to Service, or Labour, in one State, under the Laws 
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any 
Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service 
and Labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to 
whom such Service or Labour shall be due." It has never 
been doubted, by lawyers and Judges, but has been denied by 
Northern negro-thieves, that the "persons held to service" 
means only fugitive negro slaves. Eleven Northern States 
"attempted to abrogate, annul and nullify two Acts of Con- 
gress, and to arrest their operation within the limits of each 
of those eleven States," and that, as Mr. Webster truly said, 
was "a plain violation of the Constitution, and a proceeding 
essentially revolutionary, ' ' If the attempt to nullify a tariff law 
be revolutionary the attempt to nullify a Statute of Congress 
requiring delivery of an owner's slave on demand, is revolu- 
tionary. The latter case is much stronger than the former. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 199 

because the Constitution provides in express words for the 
owner to have his slave, whereas, there is not a word in the 
Constitution about the tariff, or protection, or fostering one 
industry at the expense of all others. While it is the law that 
Congress can raise revenue by levying imposts, it is undeniable 
that Congress cannot lawfully lay imposts so heavy as to 
oppress A to benefit B. Where the limit of its power to levy 
that tax lies, is the debatable ground. South Carolina believed 
Congress had gone beyond that limit, and that her reserved 
right to interfere was, therefore, lawful. 

To say her constitutional right to interfere is not the correct 
phrase. The right to the Presidency after due election; the 
right to a U. S. judgeship after nomination by the President 
and legal confirmation by the Senate; the right to draw one's 
salary as an ambassador, congressman, or consul, is a constitu- 
tional right. These offices are created by the agreement of the 
13 States that is evidenced by that written document. But 
when we speak of State-rights we are speaking of the rights of 
a Sovereign. They do not arise from nor are they dependent 
on the Constitution, or any other agency. Power, Sovereign, or 
Sovereignty on earth. They are in no sense derivative, except 
that the State springs full-fledged from the united heads, wills 
and hearts of the people, who breathe into it the breath of life. 
At that moment the State is a Sovereign, with power to do any 
act she or the people that represent her may decide to do, pro- 
vided the act shall not infringe on the rights or interests of any 
other Sovereign. When the people of Massachusetts met in 
convention to ratify the Constitution, they could have resolved 
and passed an order, or decree to hang John Adams, and all 
the Powers on earth could not, rightfully, have prevented the 
hanging. Yea, more, when Daniel Webster delivered that 
grand speech on the Constitution and the Union in the Senate, 
March 7th, 1850, the people of Massachusetts, instead of mob- 
bing him and tearing him to pieces, could, after adjournment 
of Congress, have elected delegates to a State convention, and 
those delegates, after organization, could by ordinance have 
repealed the the State Constitution, and then by vote could 
have ordered the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest Daniel Webster 
and to hang him from Faneuil Hall, and no power on earth 



200 TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 

could have lawfully interfered to prevent the hanging. Those 
who for a century have believed the government of the 
United States to be omnipotent, or, at least, the Sovereign 
Ruler of each and all the States, will say that it, the supreme 
power, could send the army into Massachusetts to save the 
victim, or could, through the judicial department, by habeas 
corpus, command the sergeant-at-arms to bring the body of 
Daniel Webster at once before the Court, and then by judgment 
declaring his arrest and detention illegal, discharge him from 
further custody. 

Had Virginia, in solemn convention, ordered that George 
Washington should be hanged, or burnt alive, no other Power 
could lawfully have prevented the execution of that order. 
The civilized nations of Europe for centuries have been hor- 
rified by the massacre of Christians by that embodiment of 
tyranny, the brutal Sultan, and have strained against that 
irrefragable chain — the law of Nations that bound them — to 
get their hands around his throat, but they could not reach 
him. He was hedged about by the divinity that protects every 
sovereign, and his own sweet will could not be thwarted so 
long as he acted within his own acknowledged borders. 

It is an easy problem — if problem at all — to apply the fore- 
going undeniable law of nations to the State of South Carolina 
in 1830 and to the Southern States in 1861. They all were 
sovereigns in 1787 when they agreed to the Constitution. This 
opinion, as I understand the relation between the States and 
the federal government, and the sovereign powers of each 
State, is not based on the law of the Constitution, but on the 
law of nations. The federal judiciary has no original jurisdic- 
tion over the criminal procedure of a State, or of crime not 
committed on soil within the exclusive jurisdiction of the 
United States, as in forts, arsenals, lighthouses, mints, custom 
houses and the like. In the Constitution as adopted by the nine 
States there is no power delegated by the States that enables 
any department of the federal government to arrest the supposed 
action of Massachusetts. The powers conferred on the Judi- 
ciary Article III,^ Sec. 2, are exclusively civil. If Mr. Webster 
were arrested, except for treason, felony or breach of the 
peace, during a session of Congress, or going to or returning 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 201 

from Congress, the writ of habeas corpus from a federal court 
would run. Hence, I said above, ''after adjournment of 
Congress." 

Of the first ten amendments to the Constitution only two, 
the fifth and sixth, speak of criminal cases or trials. The only 
reference to criminal law or procedure in the original Constitu- 
tion relates to trial by impeachment which is strictly a Federal 
provision and is not a proceeding by judges and juries, or by 
judges only. The House prosecutes and the Senate sits as a 
court, presided over by the Chief Justice. 

At first blush, the fifth and sixth amendments seem to lay 
some inhibition on Massachusetts in the case supposed, and I 
proceed now to consider them. We must not forget that the 
question involves primarily the Law of Nations, and that that 
law grows out of and is based exclusively on sovereignty. We 
must look at the State of Massachusetts as she stood before and 
at the time she voted to enter the Union. She was clothed, 
humanly speaking and in relation to other powers, with omnipo- 
tence as to limitations within her own territorial jurisdiction. 
I speak of omnipotence not as unlimited as to ability for execu- 
tion, but as unrestrained within her borders by any possible 
human control. She was as untrammeled as the Thirty Tyrants, 
or Turkey, or any one of the twelve Caesars. For what she did 
in civil or criminal procedure at home she was responsible to 
no one, to no Power on earth. Her only responsibility for any 
act was to the Ruler of the Universe. 

Vattel in the Preliminaries to his treatise, page 59 says: 
"Nations being free and independent, though the conduct of one 
of them be illegal and condemnable by the laws of conscience, 
the others are bound to acquiesce in it when it does not infringe 
upon their perfect rights. The liberty of that nation would not 
remain entire if the others were to arrogate to themselves the 
right of inspecting and regulating her actions; an assumption 
on their part that would be contrary to the law of Nations, 
which declares every nation free and independent of all the 
others. ' ' 



CHAPTER XXVn. 

THE RIGHT WAY TO DETERMINE THE 

QUESTION. 

The ruling vice of Mr. Webster's arguments with Hayne 
and Calhoun was his dishonesty of both head and heart. I 
have shown where his heart was. It was with New England, 
his mother; with his brothers and sisters for whom the Tariff 
for Protection was distilling fatness, and its offspring, power; 
and it was with and bound to the "Committee of Forty" who 
had bought him. I leave that view as presented, because it does 
not reach the question of the * * good or evil to the Constitution 
of the country he might do " by his speech, January 26th, 1830. 
A man may be dishonest and, yet, reason like an angel. He 
may be honest and reason like a fool. Mr. Webster was a 
master of logic, and his fault in this debate was in the position 
he chose. There is a tiresome quantity of verbiage in both 
speeches, to one who is searching for the thread of arguments 
on which it is strung. This is one of the arts of a sophist or a 
demagogue. He seeks to ** darken counsel by words without 
wisdom." As I understand this question it is not necessary to 
do more than to state what it was and still is, and then to dissect 
Mr. Webster's treatment. The questions were (1) : Does the 
Constitution prohibit a State, or ten or forty States to nullify 
an Act of Congress by preventing its operation within its or 
their border? (2) : Does the Constitution prohibit a State, or 
ten or forty States, to secede from the Union with or without 
cause to be decided by its, or their, citizens? 

The Constitution being silent, the question had to be deter- 
mined as other legal documents, as the meaning of contracts 
and statutes, for example, must be found. The Constitution 
was a legal document. The Senate was sitting as a Court to 
ascertain its meaning on a vital question on which not a sen- 
tence, or word, in its entire compass shed a ray of light. It will 
be of great assistance to know how a Court of learned Judges, 
of a State Supreme Court or of the United States Supreme 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 203 



Court, would have proceeded in an endeavor — ^honest, of course, 
— to decide either question that the Senate had under consider- 
ation. The first act of the Court would be to read the Constitu- 
tion to find out what it had to say. If they found it silent, the:*- 
would resort to its preamble for some intimation that mighu 
assist them. If they should find none, they would again read 
the body of the Constitution to see if they could possibly find 
if any part might by intendment or dubious meaning throw any 
light on the intention of the makers. If they should find every 
article, section, sentence and word clear, distinct, unequivocal, 
with but one possible meaning, they would next and as a last 
resort, look at the parties to the contract and all their surround- 
ings and circumstances to ascertain what they intended to do 
before they signed the paper. This would be on the hypothesis 
that all the signers were of age, were of sound mind, and acting 
from free will. K the Court knew that the parties to the con- 
tract were free and independent sovereigns, they would adopt 
another line of thought. They would lay aside municipal law 
and take up the laws that govern Nations, States, and all other 
Sovereigns. And it is just at this point in his investigation that 
Daniel Webster, the Judge, balked, halted and turned away. 
He saw that if he entered upon that ground he would be in the 
enemy's line, where his weapon would not be as effective as a 
wooden lath, and that he would have to surrender. 

Before taking up the line of argument the Court would have 
followed when scanning the text of the Constitution, and the 
Law of Nations by which the Court would have decided the 
question, I will submit a few remarks on the two main grounds 
on which Mr. Webster relied. The first was, that "We, the peo- 
ple of the United States, framed and adopted the Constitution. ' ' 
When be took that position he knew that he was doing what 
no court would listen to. He was overriding a cardinal rule 
for construing statutes and all legal documents that begiu with 
a preamble, or other introductory writing. The rule is that a 
preamble can not be used to construe a statute or writing un- 
less there is ambiguity in the body of the paper. There is no 
ambiguity in that instrument. It is as clear, plain and explicit 
as the Decalogue, or the Sermon on the Mount, excepting always 
that India rubber phrase, "the general welfare," which reminds 



204 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

a lawyer of the donee who was promised as much land as an 
ox hide could cover^ and who cut the hide around from border 
to center in an unbroken string and claimed ' ' acres of land. ' ' His 
resort to the preamble was to dodge "the States" that the Con- 
stitution bristled with. He was trying to keep out of the way 
where stood confronting him "The Laws of Natioils." If the 
people en masse, made the Constitution, the Law of Nations 
would not apply, because that would have been the act of one 
nation. If each State as a sovereign acted separately, he 
would be forced to accept the gage of battle thrown at him by 
Calhoun, and fight it out on the ground of sovereignty. The 
question was, is there any part of the Constitution between the 
States that impairs the right of a sovereign to withdraw. He 
endeavored to shift the issue by contending that the States did 
not make the compact, but that all the people within the States, 
acting as one body, made it. For this reason he had to build 
his argument on the preamble. Further on I shall take up the 
question thus made by Mr. Webster. I will now consider his 
contention that "the people settled the question for all time." 

In strictness of polemics, a construction of the Constitution 
was not the question before the Senate, or rather, was not in- 
volved in the discussion. The real issue turned solely on the 
Law of Nations. The Constitution was as silent as the grave 
on nullification and secession, and the discussion was along the 
line of prohibition, or non-prohibition of both. The issue was 
then and is now ; — 

When several sovereigns make a compact, contract, con- 
vention, or agreement (call it as you please) to do certain acts 
through an agent, and no time for its duration is fixed, can one 
or more of the sovereigns withdraw or secede at will? 

This, as I conceive, is the whole question. It must be borne 
in mind that matters of justice and equity between the parties 
are not involved in the question. The Laws of Nations provide 
for that contingency. It is one of power and privilege that are 
inherent to sovereignty, and immutable and indestructible. For 
when one power is lost or destroyed, sovereignty is destroyed. 
Sovereignty is a unit, a perfect globe, and can not be 
diminished. Diminution is destruction. 



CHAPTER XXVin. 

SOVEREIGNTY AND THE LAW OF 

NATIONS. 

Did the thirteen States, each a sovereign, intend to destroy 
their sovereignty when they agreed to unite and exercise jointly 
through a common agent a few of their sovereign powers ? And 
whether they so intended or not, did they, in reality, destroy 
their sovereignty when they adopted the Constitution? Just 
this is the place and time to quote a few pertinent paragraphs 
and sentences from "The Law of Nations." I select Vattel, a 
writer well accredited. It will aid in forming the right conclu- 
sions, to submit a few reflections between the various sections 
and paragraphs of Vattel 's book. Besides it is better to con- 
sider the nature of our federal government, as it seems to be in 
the North the generalissimo of the Union — in other words, a 
nation over all the States. This view or belief pervades that 
section. 

"A nation or State," says Vattel, "is a society composed ol 
men who have united, forming one body politic, for mutual 
safety and advantage. It is based on the laws, rights, powers 
and privileges that every man has in a state of nature. One 
of the laws of nature is perfect freedom and independence to 
do as he may will, but with the restriction to accord to all other 
men the same rights, powers and privileges, and not to interfere 
with them." 

Again, Page 3, Chapter 1st. "Several sovereigns and inde- 
pendent States may unite themselves by a perpetual confeder- 
acy, without ceasing to be, each individually, a perfect State. 
They will together constitute a republic; their joint 
deliberations will not impair the sovereignty of each member, 
though they may, in certain respects, put some restraint on the 
exercise of it (sovereignty), in virtue of voluntary engage- 
ments. A person does not cease to be free and independent, 
when he is obliged to fulfill engagements which he has volun- 
tarily contracted." 



206 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Let it be borne in mind that each of the States, acting sep- 
arately, was governed, externally, b}^ no law but the law of 
Nations ; that when they united they were still sovereigns and 
that as such they were still governed by the laws of Nations, 
except so far as by agreement (the Constitution) they had 
voluntarily restrained themselves from the exercise of a few 
powers of a sovereign, and had delegated that right to a com- 
mon agent to be used by it ''for their mutual safety and 
advantage." By the law of Nations just quoted, we know that 
the States after the union remained sovereign. Without refer- 
ring to the Constitution we know that they, being sovereign, 
were still vested with all rights, powers, privileges, et cetera, 
that constitute sovereignty. But it is contended that when 
the States delegated to Congress certain powers they divested 
themselves of those powers, and that Congress received them as 
an unconditional grant in perpetuity. To that contention there 
are several answers — each one complete. 

First : Sovereignty can only be held by human beings acting 
together as a community. It can not exist in a thing, in a paper 
document, or in machinery called a government. If the States, 
each acting alone, attempted to grant their sovereign power to 
declare war, levy taxes, or any other power, there was no man, 
or State, or nation, free and independent, that could take title 
to the thing they intended to grant. The Constitution, a paper, 
could not take the grant. The government, which is nothing 
more than the will of sovereignty in action, could not take it. 
The men who were to operate the government could not take 
it, because they were not known — they were in fieri. A grant 
must vest in some human being, instanter, and a grant of a sov- 
ereign power must vest in a sovereign, as only a sovereign can 
hold and exercise sovereign powers. It may be said that, before 
the reign of the virgin Queen, Kings of England often granted 
monopolies to favorites and that they thus granted a sovereign 
right to subjects. The Kings did not give away a sovereign 
right. Vattel says they could not do it, as the Law of Nations 
forbids it. They gave the privilege to exercise a right inherent 
to the crown, but a privilege defeasible at will or on the death 
of the King. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 207 

Second : Vattel, Page 30, states another law of Nations or 
States to be this: "Every true sovereignty is, in its own 
nature, unalienable." Every State before the Union was a true 
sovereignty. The existence of a true sovereignty stripped of 
any powers that, by the Law of Nations, belong to a sovereign, 
is a paradox. It is to say ten are ten after five are deducted. 

Third : As hitherto said, the people in the States — the citi- 
zens of each State, were the only people in the States before 
and after they united. There were no people of the United 
States. And as already shown in a prior chapter, there were 
no human beings (who are necessary to sovereignty) to take 
even one attribute of sovereignty. Hence, the thirteen separate 
peoples, when they acted in union in adopting the Constitution, 
could not, even if they so intended, grant, or divest themselves 
of any of their sovereign powers. If they made the attempt, 
they were trying to destroy their own sovereignty; they were 
trying to give away sovereign powers to a nonexistent thing; 
they were giving away, as a man would give who takes a dollar 
from his right-hand pocket and puts it in the left-hand pocket. 
A man, in a state of nature, possessed of all sovereign powers, 
can not donate them, or any one of them, to himself. So, the 
sovereign thirteen States could not grant to themselves that of 
which they, by the law of Nations, following the law of nature, 
were already possessed. 

Fourth : We have so far discussed the question only in the 
light of the Law of Nations. Vattel says that Law is immutable. 
A thing immutable is unchangeable and indestructible. We 
will now endeavor to ascertain whether the Federal Constitu- 
tion — the only base the federal government stands on, the only 
bond between the sovereign States, contains any Article, Sec- 
tion, Paragraph, Line or Word that is an attempt to change 
"the immutable law of Nations." In other words, does it 
witness that each sovereign State attempted to cut itself in 
twain — to give away about half of its sovereign powers, rights, 
privileges, etc., and to leave itself a political and national t'orso, 
without the power to make war to preserve its existence, or if 
fight it must, to fight like heroic Widrington, "on his stumps" 
after he lost his legs. This power to declare war is selected, 
first, because it is the most important sovereign power for self- 



208 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

preservation, and, second, because it is the power that Lincoln 
assumed to be a constitutional right, and used it to destroy the 
Southern Confederacy. If we can find this sovereign power 
was not granted by the States to the federal government we 
arrive at two inevitable conclusions, each more terrible than the 
monsters Sin and Death, that Satan met guarding the gate of 
Hell. The first is that Abraham Lincoln violated the Constitu- 
tion and his oath when, as Commander-in-Chief, he at the head 
of seventy-five thousand armed men, invaded the borders of a 
sovereign State — Virginia; and, second, that not the federal 
government, but the twenty-four sovereign States of the North 
combined — not by right given by the Law of Nations, not by 
right given by the Constitution, but by right of the "Higher 
Law" by which every outlaw commits arson, murder and rape 
— and, with millions of citizens ordered out by the States, in- 
vaded the borders of eleven Southern sovereign States, and by 
vastly superior numbers and metal, in violation of the Law of 
Nations, forced them back into the Union. 

What will be said of the power "to declare" (which includes 
the power to make and to prosecute) "War," applies with equal 
force to every other power given to each of the three Depart- 
ments named in the Constitution. Under the head "State 
Rights" an analysis of the Constitution was made. Therefore, 
I shall but briefly review here what the States said of the power 
to declare war. 

They said "the Congress shall have power to declare war" 
and that the President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the 
army and navy," But they said the Congress shall not give him 
money to carry on war for a period longer than two years. Is 
there any sovereignty given to a man who, when at war, must 
stop dead still, like grandfather's clock, unless the Congress 
shall vote for his use more money? And this sovereign over 
Northern (but not Southern) sovereign States, must account for 
every dollar thus voted to him, not as a sovereign, but only as 
commander of the army and navy. Is that sovereignty? But 
he is not permitted to handle a dollar of the money voted for 
war. The money goes into the treasury. He can't touch it. 
His subordinate^ the Secretary of the Treasury, keeps it and pays 
it out under fixed rules. When the war is over this Northern 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 209 

sovereign can not make a treaty with the enemy — nor, indeed, 
a treaty with any sovereign at peace with the States acting 
together under their agreement, or contract, or compact called 
the Constitution. The people of the several States have sent 
some servants to "Washington — called by the Constitution Sena- 
tors — to make treaties for them. And the sovereign States have 
told those Senators that their masters will not be bound by any 
treaty unless two-thirds of them approve it. Is that the language 
of servants to their sovereign? The President, the States' head 
servant, but the people's sovereign up North, is authorized to 
act as clerk and write down the proposed terms for a treaty, 
and he must then hand the paper to their other servants, two- 
thirds of whom are authorized to say ''Yes" and if a majority, 
or one less than two-thirds say '*No," the head servant's paper 
goes to the waste basket or pigeon hole as a curio for future 
reference. 

The President, the States' head servant, can not appoint one 
ambassador, one judge, one consul, and many other officers with- 
out saying to the States' Senators — "by your leave. Sirs!" And, 
should he be reasonably suspected of treason, bribery, or other 
high crimes, and even of misdemeanors, the States, acting 
through their servants in the House of Representatives, can 
accuse and arraign him, and those other servants — the States' 
senators — can try and punish him. At the North this head 
servant is a sovereign, or, at least, is vested by the States' with 
sovereign powers. 

But the North says Congress can declare war, and as the 
war power is one of the attributes of sovereignty, therefore this 
power makes Congress, pro tanto, a sovereign body. Well it 
seems that just here, I have struck a snag, because I am com- 
pelled to admit that Vattel's definition of a nation. State, or 
sovereign, in its letter, fits Congress "joust like de paper on 
do vail." He says "Nations, or States, are bodies politic, 
societies of men united together for the purpose of promoting 
their mutual safety and advantage by the joint efforts of their 
combined strength." That definition seems to cover — "You 
tickle me and I'll tickle you" — "You scratch my back, and I'll 
scratch your back" — "You vote for my bill to help re-elect me, 
and I'll do the same for you." "Let's all by the joint efforts 
of our combined strength hoist our salary from $5,000.00 up to 



210 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

$7,500.00 and vote $1,500.00 apiece for clerks. "—" Help me roll 
my log, and I'll help you roll your log." — ''You help me to 
get money to clean out ' Suffrage ' branch and I '11 vote for your 
rotten pension bills." Sic Transit pecuniae populi! "While this 
fits Congress as a whole, it does not fit all Congressmen. There 
are some clean men in that body. 

The Congress can declare war and vote money to carry it on. 
Monarchs collect the money, go to war and keep at it so long 
as they will. That is sovereign power. But Congress can not 
do that. The States make the Congress. They elect both 
branches. Every two years they dismiss all members of one 
branch and one third of the other. If the States disapprove of 
a war they can notify those servants to stop it. If they do not 
obey, the States, on a given day, can call them up and cut off 
their official heads and send others at once to a called session of 
Congress, ordered to stop the war, and they will stop it. This 
is the law promulgated by thirteen sovereigns in their compact 
made in 1787, and was the law under which they agreed to live 
together; was the law when in 1861, twenty-two sovereign 
Northern States made war on eleven sovereign Southern States, 
and it is the law today. Where is any sovereignty, under that 
law, to be found in the President, or in Congress, or in the 
federal judiciary? 

Again, waiving for the moment the fact that the federal 
government was not a pre-existing nation, or State, capable of 
course of receiving and holding a grant by another sovereign of 
any of his or its powers, and assuming as true that the thirteen 
States granted, or tried to grant, some of their sovereign powers 
and rights to the federal government, then, the imporant ques- 
tion is, in whom did those granted powers vest ? Take the power 
to declare war. Is it vested in Congress? If so, with this and 
more than forty other powers (Art. 7, Section VIII), Congress 
has more attributes of sovereignty than all the States have. A 
sovereign power is fixed, permanent. Vattel says it is inalien- 
able even by a monarch without the consent of his subjects. On 
the 4th of March every second year Congress expires. It is 
politically dead. True, successors have been elected by the 
States the year before, but they are not Congressmen in presenti. 
They are not qualified to declare war, nor to exercise any other 
of the many powers of Congress. They are only heirs expectant 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 211 

— members elect. Their only power is to draw their salary- 
monthly, a privilege not granted by the Constitution, but by 
themselves. There is no Congress for nine months. In order 
to be a Congress they must assemble and be sworn. This point 
I have raised in another chapter, but it is very pertinent here. 
As "sovereignty is immutable" so must be that which is an attri- 
bute of sovereignty, as, for instance, the power to wage war. 
If lost by grant to another sovereign, it can not be taken back. 
It is lost to the grantor forever. Therefore, if Congress by 
sovereign grant took the power to wage war, the States lost it. 
When Congress dies by law what becomes of all its alleged sov- 
ereign powers? Where are they during the nine months of 
interval? Did they issue from the dead sovereigns, and, like 
fairy elves, keep midnight revels through dismal corridors, 
aAvaiting the next crop of States' servants to glide into their 
trousers, or perch on their pates, and thus make them sovereign ? 
If not, where did they rest, or dwell? Sovereign powers do 
not lie around loose. They have a local habitation, and are 
immortal. 

But the thirteen States did more to show the world that they 
understood the Law of Nations, and their determination to hold 
every power, right and privilege of a nation. They, as a last 
word, declared that they were appointing an agent and nothing 
more to act for them for * * the purpose of promoting their mutual 
safety and advantage." They considered the agreement that 
bound them together as only tentative. This view was held by 
Alexander Hamilton even after the Union was formed. It might 
not be the blessing they sought. It might be advisable to add 
to, or to take from it. The Union was an untried experiment 
without precedent. Looking ahead, therefore, as their last decla- 
ration they announced — ' ' When we wish to make a change, three- 
fourths of us will meet and make such changes by taking from, 
or adding to, as we desire." Under that reserved power three- 
fourths of the States can take from Congress the power to 
declare war, and to levy taxes, and to compel ninety men to 
support one man in idleness, who spends the money they must 
hand over to him, in royal feasts for monkeys and dogs, in 
foreign lands, and importing anarchists, members of the Mafia 
and Black Hand, to break every strike, to buy legislators and con- 



212 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

gressmen — more degraded than negro slaves; to keep up the 
despotism with face of friend and heart of fiend and caressing 
with the lips while robbing with the hands — that masquerades 
under the name of Protection. 

"VVe have seen from the foregoing what is the relation, the 
status in law^ of the States to the government they created. "VVe 
must now consider what is their relation to each other under 
their written bond of union. Vattel says: "It is essential to 
every civil society, that each member have resigned a part of 
his right to the body of the society, and that there exist in it an 
authority capable of commanding all the members, of giving 
them laws, and of compelling those who should refuse to obej^ 
Nothing- of this kind can be conceived or supposed to subsist 
between nations. .Each sovereign State claims, and actually 
possesses, an absolute independence of all the others. They are 
all, according to Monsieur Wolf himself, "to be considered as 
so many individuals who live together in a state of nature, and 
who acknowledge no other laws but those of nature, or her 
Great Author." I suspend the discussion, for a moment, to 
submit a pertinent reflection. 

The absolute independence of a State — its possession of im- 
mutable powers and rights, as complete as one man would have 
were he the only human being on the earth — can not possibly 
be too strongly stressed. This will not be denied even by frivol- 
ous readers who know the dangerous and deadly views — leading 
to monarchy and despotism — that are entertained with comfort 
and delight by people in the Northern States^ especially in New 
England. To prove this assertion it is only necessary to quote 
a statement by John Fiske, philosopher, scholar, professor of 
history, and able writer. He was bom at Hartford, 1842, edu- 
cated at Harvard University; graduated 1863, at 21 years; was 
professor of history at Harvard — delivered lectures on American 
history in Boston — repeated them in London and Edinburgh — 
wrote fourteen books and many essays, and died much too late, 
in 1901. 

I give this extended sketch to show his bulk in New England 
as teacher, historian and scholar. He received his education 
while the twenty-two sovereign Northern States, and not the 
federal government, as he was taught, were shooting to death 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 213 

the Southern Confederacy, composed of eleven sovereign States. 
We must, therefore, believe he wrote, and taught as American 
history and as the Law of Nations, what he was taught at Har- 
vard and what he absorbed as he rubbed against statesmen of 
New England, of whom Henry Cabot Lodge is a select sample. 
Mr. Fiske says: "The State, while it does not possess such 
attributes of sovereignty as were, by our federal constitution, 
granted to the United States, does, nevertheless, possess many 
very important and essential characteristics of a sovereign 
body." 

Here we are comforted by the assurance of a New England 
philosopher and scholar that^ although each American State — 
like a young buck, who, just of age, rich and strong, and sowing 
wild ^ats, squanders nearly all of his fortune — ^was such a fool 
as to give away the most valuable of its powers, it still had 
enough left, like the old woman with her whiskey, "to worry 
along with." 

This teaching is more direful than an act of treason. The 
hanging of a traitor produces a quieting effect on the public 
pulse, and quells seditious tendency in others. But here is a 
seditionary bearing the seal and imprimatur of Harvard Univer- 
sity, journeying, without stop, through the Union, accredited 
bj high repute as a fit personage for entree to cultured circles 
and, when received, he sows in the mind of age and youth seed 
that will bear the fruits of usurpation, then plutocratic rule, 
followed by despotism. He is like the Puritan emissaries who, 
sent with Bibles for sale, gained through them hospitable recep- 
tion from the masters, and then, under cover of night, sought 
the slaves and poured into the porches of their ears the hebenon 
of sedition^ insurrection and assassination. No youth from the 
South or West should be sent to Harvard, or Yale, or any New 
England school where such destructive political heresy is taught. 
No Southern library should give space to this sapper and miner 
of sovereignty of the States. Southern youth can do far better in 
Southern colleges and universities where the head, like Fiske 's 
federal government, is supreme, than at Harvard or Yale, where 
the feet, arms and legs are in the lead, and the head plays 
second fiddle, or kettle drum ,and the graduate returns with 
more Yale locks in his trousers than of "Locke's Understand- 

t 

ing" in his head. • 



CHAPTER XXJX. 

THE HUMAN LAW OF HIGHEST 

AUTHORITY. 

There has long prevailed a gross misconception of what the 
makers of that compact meant by saying * * the Constitution, and 
laws made in pursuance thereof, and treaties, shall be the 
Supreme law of the land." They are of higher control than 
even the Constitutions of the States, and, for that reason only, 
the impression has been general that every citizen of every 
State owes allegiance to the Constitution, the laws made by 
Congress, and treaties. This misapprehension arises from con- 
founding allegiance to a sovereign with obedience to law. The 
two are as different as cause differs from effect. The citizen, 
or subject, must obey the laws. But there are gradations of law 
in this country. They rise like stair-steps. There is the law 
of custom, the canon law, the civil law, the common law, the 
statute law, organic or constitutional law, the law of treaties 
and the law of Nations. In order to insure domestic tranquil- 
ity, that is, harmony between the States, our wise forbeara 
declared that those three classes of laws should have higher 
authority than any State laws. This was the sole purpose of 
that second paragraph in Article VI. "Without it, there would 
have been "confusion worse confounded" among the States. 
It is simply the arbiter appointed, or umpire, between the States. 

But, even they are not the highest law. They are but con- 
ventional law, law by agreement of the States — the parties to 
the convention. They affect no one else — ^no other Power, or 
people. They are entirely domestic — a family arrangement. 
But, above that law, and above and controlling the States is the 
law of highest authority known to the human race. It is the Law 
of Nations. A new born nation does not have to agree to it. There 
is no initiation — no baptism. As soon as it breathes, this law 
becomes its vestment for life. This law is like the circumam- 
bient air. No nation can escape from it — no nation can live 
without it. It has been established by the greatest and wisest 
men of all the earth since Justice, Mercy, Honor and Truth have 
been recognized among civilized men as the true, the right and 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 215 

the only safe rule of action among nations. It has its organic 
law, and under that it has a code of laws. Its organic law is 
to establish justice, insure tranquility, provide for the common 
defense, to promote the general welfare, and to secure the 
blessings of liberty to all citizens and subjects. One of its 
fundamental laws is protection of the citizens or subjects by 
the sovereign power, and, in return, allegiance from the citizens 
and subjects to the protecting sovereign Power. A mutual duty 
is thus established that neither the Sovereign, nor the citizens, 
or subjects, can violate. They may wander like nomads to the 
ends of the earth, and that chain, always lengthening as they 
wander, is never broken. From the desert sands, from the wilds 
of the jungle, from the isles of all the seas, the subject of a 
sovereign may call on him for protection, and not call in vain. 
And the sovereign, if in danger from foreign foes, can demand 
his return, and he must obey. 

Because officers of the army and the navy are educated for 
and in the art of war at West Point and Annapolis, without 
cost to themselves, they are impressed with the idea that they 
and their services belong to the federal government at all times 
and under all conditions. Some of them seem to think that the 
federal government owns the money that is spent for their 
education. They seem not to know that the people of the States 
supply all the money to conduct these military schools; that 
they are educated by the States for their protection ; that the 
federal government is nothing but the financial agent of the 
States, and, in its own right, owns nothing. Hence, some of 
those officers conceived that their allegiance was due to the 
federal government. They seemed to believe that the govern- 
ment was and is a sovereign nation. They seem not to under- 
stand that sovereignty is in each State, and that the Constitution 
is but an agreement by thirteen sovereigns to erect a govern- 
ment to represent them in their relations to other sovereigns, 
and to conduct their inter-State relations. Hence, when the 
division of the States occurred in 1861, some of the officers in 
the army and navy believed their allegiance was due to the 
federal government as a Nation over and controlling all the 
States. A greater, more grievous and ruinous error was never 
made. 



216 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Historians, publicists and statesmen will look for higher 
authority on this question of Sovereignty and Allegiance than 
the opinion of the Sewards with their "Higher Law", the 
Garrisons with their damnation of the Constitution, and of 
Lincoln and the fanatics who elected and followed him in his 
insane invasion of the South, his suspension of the writ of 
habeas corpus and proclamation of martial law throughout the 
Northern States, his arrest and imprisonment of Northern 
editors, legislators, diplomats, a U. S. Senator, and forty thou- 
sand other peaceable citizens, his suppression by the military 
of freedom of speech and of the press, and his control of the 
ballot-box in eight or more Northern States to secure his second 
term as President. 

The Nationalists ignore the Laws of Nations, but the Laws 
of Nations will not be ignored. The Nationalists sprang from 
a race of fanatics — the Puritans — whose code from 1637, when 
they in convention at Salem, Massachusetts, established their 
Procrustean religion, to this hour, was and is to override every 
obstacle that might conflict with their two controlling passions — 
Religious Fanaticism and Avarice. Hence, in their view of State 
Eights, Sovereignty and Allegiance, there is nothing within 
their horizon but the Constitution, and in that they can see 
nothing but petty communities called States, all under the 
sovereign dominion of a great consolidated Nation called "The 
United States ' '. With triumphant tone they read : 

* ' This Constitution and the laws of the United States which 
shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or 
which shall be made under the authority of the United States, 
shall be the supreme law of the land. ' ' No one since the Con- 
stitution was agreed to has ever questioned the validity and 
the wisdom of that clause, and the supremacy of the three 
classes of laws therein named — the Constitution, the laws of 
Congress that do not violate it, and treaties with foreign nations. 
The thirteen States agreed to that clause, and it would be idiotic 
in them and in any State since admitted into the Union to say 
it is not law superior to all State laws. But that clause has no 
possible bearing on State Rights, State Sovereignty and Alle- 
giance. That clause is indispensable. Two of the six purposes 
named in the preamble, that induced the States to form a Union, 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 217 

to-wit; *'to establish justice and insure domestic tranquility", 
could not possibly have been effected without an agreement that, 
in cases of conflict between statutes of thirteen States and judi- 
cial decisions of their courts, there should be a controlling 
authority. Hence, they agreed that the Constitution, and the 
laws of their Congress, and treaties their common agent might 
make for them with foreign nations, should be the supreme law. 
"The laws of the United States" mentioned in that clause are 
nothing more than Acts of Congress, The word "laws" has a 
distinct, technical meaning. In a republic it means enactments 
by a legislative body. A Constitution or a treaty, while being 
law, is not classed among "laws." The first Article and first 
Section of the Constitution demonstrates that "the United 
States, ' ' in that clause establishing the supreme law, is synony- 
mous with Congress. It reads: "All legislative powers herein 
granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, 
which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives. ' ' 
The President can not make a law. The federal courts can not 
legislate, that is — lawfully. And the United States, which are 
the States United, can not legislate, nor give judicial judgments, 
nor execute the laws. But the Nationalists assume that the 
States are entirely subordinate to the federal government, 
because they agreed that "the Constitution and the lawful 
statutes of the United States (that is, of Congress) and treaties 
shall be the supreme law of the land." There never was a more 
glaring non sequitur. The agreement to make one civil law of 
more authority than another has no beating on the question of 
sovereignty and allegiance. Men do not owe allegiance to tlie 
law they make. The people who make the law are above it — 
can unmake it at pleasure. But the people — a State for instance 
— who make it, in their social aggregation, are the sovereigu, 
and to that aggregated body each citizen owes allegiance. It 
is simply nonsense to speak of allegiance to a law. 

There is another hypothesis which is a test of the sincerity 
of the Nationalists and of their Allegiance. The Puritans, dur- 
ing fifty years before the Southern States seceded, made 
frequent threats to secede, that their supersensitive consciences 
might be rid of the sin their sainted Pilgrim Fathers saddled on 
the South — that ' * twin sister of barbarism ' ' — slavery. Even as 



218 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 



late as two years before they started out on their Holy Cnisade 
to kill the Southern barbarians, and to give the down-trodden, 
manacled, fettered and starved negroes freedom and social 
equality with themselves, a convention of these religious fanat- 
ics was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. They adopted ten 
Resolutions, which are printed in the appendix hereto. Two 
of their Resolutions will suffice at this point : 

"Resolved, That this movement does not seek merely dis- 
union, but the more perfect union of the free States by the 
expulsion of the slave States from the confederation in which 
they have ever been an element of discord, danger and disgrace. 

"Resolved, That the sooner the separation takes place, the 
more peaceful it will be ; but that peace or war is a secondary 
consideration in view of our present perils. Slavery must be 
conquered, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must." 

One Resolution reads that the "meeting was attended by 
men of various parties and affinities." 

The hypothesis is this : Suppose that these repeated threats 
to secede had been carried into effect, and the twenty-two free 
States had seceded and formed another confederation, leaving 
the Southern States in and as the Union, to which would the 
citizens of Massachusetts, for instance, have owed their 
allegiance ? What would Wendell Phillips, Garrison, Emerson, 
J. Russell Lowell, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, (Vice-Presi 
dent under Grant) and that troop of parlor warriors and 
shouters of "Rebels, Rebellion, Traitors and Treason," have 
done? Would they have clung to the Union, or stood by the 
new "confederation?" Would they have taken up arms to 
drive Massachusetts back into the Union? Suppose those 
seceded States had chosen their "Higher Law" genius, William 
H. Seward of New York, to be President, would those immacu- 
late patriots have sung "Hang Bill Seward on a sour-apple 
tree?" Would any one of these foul-mouthed denouncers of 
every Southern man as a rebel and traitor, have left Massa- 
chusetts to fight for the old Union? If the President and 
Congress of the old Union had sent ships and blockaded the 
entire coast of New England, would they have saluted the old 
flag of the United States as their own? Would each, with the 
mock fidelity of Lincoln in his first Liaugural, have exclaimed 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 219 

"I have sworn to support the Constitution and the laws, and 
my allegiance is to it. I owe no allegiance to Massachusetts?" 
Any one who might have put these questions to these 
malignant haters of the South and her people would have 
received such answer that he would have thought he was "struck 
with Heaven's afflicting thunder and besought the deep of Hell 
to shelter him." If secession by the slave States made their 
citizens rebels and traitors, secession by the free States would 
have made their citizens rebels and traitors. The cry of 
''Rebel," ''Rurbellyion," " Tur-raitor, " " Tur-reason, " was the 
most despicable and infamous attempt to stigmatize and to fix 
odium on a patriotic, honorable and innocent people. It was 
an unveiled, a naked shame ; it was organized hypocrisy ; it was 
impotent malignancy ; it was cunning knavery ; it was malicious 
conspiracy ; and, far worse than these, it was the devilish device 
of avaricious fathers to decoy hundreds of thousands of inno- 
cent and ignorant boys into the fiery furnace of battle under 
the delusion that they were fighting rebels to save the Union, 
instead of dying to gratify the ambition of an insane infidel to 
be known in history as the ' * Great Emancipator. ' ' 

A summing up will now be made of the foregoing discussion 
of the law of Sovereignty, Allegiance and Citizenship. The 
reader is requested again to remember that the law that deter- 
mines these questions is to be found between the year 1783, 
when Great Britain acknowledged the sovereignty, freedom and 
independence of the thirteen States, each by its name, and the 
year 1804 when the twelfth amendment to the Constitu- 
tion was made; because the law as it was between those two 
dates underwent no change before the Southern States seceded. 
The three negro amendments made after the war of 1861-5 have 
no possible bearing on the questions herein considered. The 
growth of this country, the increase of States from thirteen to 
forty-eight, the acquisition of territory, from that of Louisiana 
to Alaska and Panama, the multiplication of vast industries, 
the interlacing and entanglement of private interests crossing 
State lines, and the palpable encroachments and usurpations by 
the three departments of the federal government, do not affect, 
in the least, the law in force — to-wit, the Law of Nations and 
the Constitution in 1804 and 1861. With this precaution a 
resume will now be given. 



220 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

FIRST: Each State was sovereign, free and independent 
in 1783. 

SECOND: Each State in 1787, acting separately, sent 
delegates to Philadelphia to endeavor to frame an instrument 
in writing that would be the basis for a union. 

THIRD : The delegates agreed on what was and is called 
The Constitution. 

FOURTH: Each State, by a convention that represented 
the sovereignty of the State, discussed the entire instrument, 
and agreed or disagreed to it. 

FIFTH : Before the States entered the Union there were no 
people within the territory of the thirteen States but the citi- 
zens of each Sate, and the citizens of each State owed allegiance 
to it and to it only. 

SIXTH: "When nine States agreed to the Constitution it 
became a compact between them. 

SEVENTH: Four States were not bound, and remained, 
each, sovereign, free and independent, and were, therefore, 
members of the family of sovereign Nations, as the nine were 
before they constituted the Union. 

EIGHTH: The other four States, before 1790, became 
members of the Union. 

NINTH: The government organized in 1787 on and in 
conformity to the Constitution was then called "The Federal 
Government." 

TENTH: The federal government is only the instrumen- 
tality by and through which "the United States," as called in 
the Constitution, do and can act, and the words "United 
States" mean nothing more than the States united, and acting 
through the federal government. 

ELEVENTH : All powers delegated to the federal govern- 
ment were derived from and delegated by the thirteen States. 

TWELFTH : The words — "the powers hereby delegated to 
the United States," mean nothing more than delegation of the 
right to exercise those powers until three-fourths of the States 
shall withdraw their assent to their exercise by the Federal 
Government, as is proven by the withdrawal from the federal 
judiciary of the right to "have jurisdiction in a suit against a 
State by a citizen of another State, and by citizens or subjects 
of a foreign State." 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 221 

THIRTEENTH: The resumption of that immunity from 
suit was the act of thirteen sovereigns and the exercise of 
sovereign power. 

FOURTEENTH : That action was the assertion of a right 
that belongs to a sovereign only, that is, immunity from suit 
by any one — whether citizen, subject, or any other sovereign. 

FIFTEENTH : The compact, or Constitution, in every fea- 
ture of it proves that the States did not intend to part with 
even one of their respective sovereign powers^ rights, privileges, 
or immunities. They provided in that instrument for their abso- 
lute creation, constant renewal, and control of the federal 
government — 

a. by reserving the power to elect Representatives to 

Congress; and by limiting their tenure of office to 
two years; 

b. by reserving the power to elect Senators to Congress ; 

and by limiting their tenure of office to six years ; 

c. by reserving the power to elect the President of the 

United States ; and limiting his term to four years ; 

d. by reserving the power to refuse to prosecute war 

against any foreign Power; 

e. by reserving control over the militia of each State ; 

f. by reserving power to impeach through their Repre- 

sentatives the President and all other civil officers 
of the United States; 

g. by holding in their own hands the right to change 

by a three-fourths' vote the compact — by adding 
to, taking from, or abolishing it altogether ; 
h, by refusing to give the President control of their 
citizens as militia, except by authority of the Gov- 
ernors of the States. 
SIXTEENTH : State Sovereignty is asserted in the twelfth 
amendment by establishing the equality of States in choosing 
a President by the House of Representatives, in the event the 
States' electors fail to name one — each State having one vote; 
thus acknowledging the equality of Rhode Island — the least — 
with Virginia — the greatest. 

SEVENTEENTH : State Sovereignty is again asserted in 
Article V by giving to the smallest State an equal voice with the 
largest State in voting to amend the Constitution. 



222 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

EIGHTEENTH: Sovereignty being immutable, inalienable 
and indivisible, the States could not grant to any society, nation, 
or other sovereign, any part of their powers without self- 
destruction as sovereigns ; a half sovereignty being impossible. 

NINETEENTH: As sovereignty is impossible without a 
society, or aggregation of moral beings under it, and as there 
were no moral beings in the territory that included the States, 
except those within the boundaries of each State, it was impos- 
sible for the States to grant away any sovereign power. 

TWENTIETH : The only human or moral beings who could 
possibly claim a grant by the States of any sovereign powers 
were the men who compose the tripartite federal government, 
but they were not in existence to receive a grant; and when 
elected they were citizens of the several States, to which they 
owed allegiance, and could not hold any rights adverse to their 
own sovereigns. 

TWENTY-FIRST: A grant of sovereign power is in per- 
petuity and can not be recovered without assent of the sovereign 
who takes it. But the powers held by the federal government can 
be taken at the will of three-fourths of the States. 

TWENTY-SECOND: The federal government is nothing 
more than a fiduciary trustee for the States. When it levies 
taxes they are expended for the benefit of the States. When 
Congress makes war it is to protect, or to benefit, the States. 
When the States acquire territory the government holds it in trust 
for the benefit of the States, and the States foot the bill. When 
it builds post-offices, court-houses, war-ships, forts, it controls 
them for the benefit of the States. 

TWENTY-THIRD : Sovereignty and Allegiance are coeval, 
reciprocal and inseparable. As there can not be two co-existent 
sovereignties over the same citizens, or subjects, so these same 
citizens, or subjects, can not owe allegiance to two sovereigns 
at the same time. And as the States existed before they formed 
the Union, the citizens of each State owe allegiance to their 
State. 

TWENTY-FOURTH: As there was no organized society 
called a nation, except each of the thirteen States, there could 
be no other allegiance by the citizens than to their respective 
States. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 223 

TWENTY-FIFTH: As no power can be exercised by any 
branch of the federal government but those expressly named, 
the power delegated to Congress to declare war is confined to war 
with a foreign power, and, therefore, it can not declare or wage 
war on a State, or States. 

TWENTY-SIXTH : As "Treason against the United States 
consists only in levying war against them, or in adhering to 
their enemies, giving them aid and comfort," the belligerent 
action must be against all the States united, as defined by the 
pronouns "them" and "their." Therefore, in a war between 
twenty-six States arrayed against ten States, there could be no 
treason committed "against the United States," or all the 
States in the Union. 

TWENTY-SEVENTH: If secession did not carry the 
Southern States out of the Union, then the federal government 
had no right or power to make war on them, and the war waged 
by the twenty-two States against them, ipso facto dissolved the 
Union, because, by the Law of Nations war terminates all con- 
tracts, agreements, compacts and treaties made by the nations 
at war. 

TWENTY-EIGHTH : If the Southern States, by secession, 
were out of the Union, then the twenty-two States, being each a 
sovereign Power, could, by the law of might, combine and wage 
war against them, just as the powers of Europe combined against 
France in 1814. But, as already said, the right or justice of the 
war made on the Southern States is another and wholly different 
question. 

TWENTY-NINTH : As citizenship can not be without alle- 
giance, and as allegiance is due to sovereignty ; and as there was 
no sovereignty within the boundary of the United States except 
that of each State, it follows, as the night the day, that every 
citizen of any one of the Confederate States who joined the 
Northern army and fought against them, was a traitor. The 
logic of this conclusion can not be evaded. Whether that man 
was a private in the ranks, or wore epaulettes and stars on his 
blue uniform, whether he commanded a regiment, a brigade, a 
corps, or an army, or was lord of the quarter-deck, or Rear 
Admiral, his status as a renegade and a traitor will be his por- 
tion as long as his name shall be remembered. 



224 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

As already said in a preceding chapter, there were no traitors 
in the Northern army but those men who^ owing allegiance by 
citizenship to some one of the Confederate States, turned their 
guns against their State that had, by the Law of Nations, the 
right to their support and defense. 

If allegiance to the United States were possible, it would 
be impossible to the States disunited. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE AUTHOR'S POSITION TESTED 
AND SUSTAINED BY HYPO- 
THETICAL CASES. 

We will now apply another test of sovereignty of the States. 
Suppose that between 1783 and 1788, through the Puritan's 
pernicious intermeddling, a war had occurred between Massa- 
chusetts and New York. Could the other States have interfered? 
If so, by what law or right ? Could the Congress under the Con- 
federation have mustered troops and have marched against the 
belligerents? "Would not that have been war waged by the 
Congress on a State? There was no President, like Lincoln, to 
decide when and how he would make war. Senator Reverdy 
Johnson, of Maryland, in the debate quoted from heretofore, 
told the Republicans that their idea of the federal government 
having power to make war on a State is an absurdity. Even 
Lincoln denied that power and tried to save himself by insisting 
he was only trying to suppress an insurrection. This was under 
the Constitution. A fortiori^ the Congress under the Confedera- 
tion could not wage war against a State. Both instruments 
forbid a State "to engage in war unless actually invaded, or in 
such imminent danger as will not admit of delay." Says Vattel, 
"Public war is that which takes place between nations or sov- 
ereigns, and which is carried on in the name of the public 
power, and by its order," The inhibition on a State to engage 
in war was laid to prevent it from embroiling the other States 
in a war. Hence, the power to make war is delegated to the 
Congress only — ^that is, is delegated to the common agent or 
representative of all the States. Under the Confederation, even 
Congress could not declare war "unless nine States assent to the 
same. ' ' 

Taking the strongest position that any Nationalist can ask, 
to-wit: that the Confederation was in full force over the States 
before the Constitution was adopted; the question is, could the 
Congress or any other power under the Confederation have 



226 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

raised a finger to interfere between New York and Massachusetts 
engaged in war ? "Will any Nationalist have the effontery to say 
that the supposed war was "an insurrection?" Insurrection is 
resistance against the authority of a sovereign, whether a king, 
a republic, or other form of a nation. Could that war be in 
resistance of the laws of the Confederation? Can not the 
Nationalists see the application of the supposed war between 
Massachusetts and New York? Do they not see proof of sov- 
ereignty of the States during the Confederation? There is no 
man so blind and dangerous to society as he who can but will 
not see. 

We will suppose, again, that just before the war of 1861, 
Kentucky, aroused to the pitch of offensive war against Ohio 
because her people were stealing Kentucky's slaves, had raised 
an army and had invaded Ohio and war had ensued. Could the 
federal government have interfered ? If so, under what delegated 
power? The war would not have been an insurrection, or a rebel- 
lion. To define war between two nations as "domestic violence" 
would be ridiculously absurd. The President could not have 
attacked both, or either, under his authority "to enforce the 
laws," They would not have violated or resisted any law 
passed by Congress. The President's power is given in the fol- 
lowing language: "He (the President) shall take care that the 
laws be faithfully executed. ' ' This is, obviously, confined to the 
Acts passed by Congress and to decisions of the federal judi- 
ciary. It has no reference to the Constitution. Every part of 
it is law — yes, "the Constitution, and the laws of the United 
States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties, 
are the Supreme law of the land. ' ' The Constitution is organic 
law. It is only the charter that gives authority to act. It is in 
no particular self-acting or self-executing. The President has 
only two powers he can exercise without some legislative aid or 
direction. They are the power to convene Congress and to 
adjourn it in case of disagreement. Even his power to fill vacan- 
cies during a recess of the Senate is dependent on co-operation 
of the Senate in making the appointments that become vacant. 
The President has no army or navy, no militia, without an Act 
of Congress. He has no power "to execute the laws of the 
Union^ suppress insurrections, and repel invasions" without a 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 227 

prior Act of Congress. He can not call forth the militia for any 
one of those three purposes until Congress shall "provide for 
calling them forth. " 

Judge Story, with his zeal to belittle the States and magnify 
the Nation he places over them, finds Executive powers in the 
oath the President must take. His imagination is so wild and his 
speech so despotic, we quote his words: "The duty imposed 
upon him, to take care that the laws shall be faithfully executed, 
follows out the strong injunction of his oath of office that he 
will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." And after 
quoting the oath he moralizes (Par, 1558) : "It is a suitable 
pledge of his fidelity and responsibility to his country; and 
creates upon his conscience a deep sense of duty, by an appeal at 
once in the presence of God and man to the most sacred and 
solemn sanctions which can operate upon the human mind. ' ' 

The quotation about the oath is not given as pertinent to the 
question of war between two States, But as it comes on the 
question of Executive powers, and as Story linked the oath with 
one of the President's powers, it is given for the reader to 
reflect on Story's moralizing on "conscience," "duty," "the 
presence of God," who was et cetera, and, then, on the probable 
effect of that oath on a man^ an infidel from his youth to his 
death ; who went to church to mock the preacher and his teaching ; 
who scoffed at the Bible that he kissed when he took that oath; 
who said Christ was a bastard ("illegitimate child") ; who was, 
at times, insane ; whose friends concealed deadly weapons from 
him to prevent suicide; who was always afflicted with the form 
of insanity called "melancholia;" who said in his inaugural 
"there can be no conflict without you yourselves being the 
aggressor;" who refused to convene Congress, and, in April, in 
violation of the Constitution and his oath, invaded Virginia with 
75,000 armed men! 

We return to the supposed war between Kentucky and Ohio, 
In reply it might be said that Section X of Article I of the 
Constitution that reads — * ' No State, without the consent of Con- 
gress, shall keep troops, or ships of war, in time of peace^ or 
engage in war unless actually invaded, or in such imminent 
danger as will not admit of delay," gives authority for federal 
control of the two States — Kentucky and Ohio. That clause is 



228 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

an inhibition on the States — imposed by themselves, and confers 
no power on the federal government. Let us treat its applica- 
bility to the supposed war. Suppose that a State should keep 
troops in time of peace, how could the President enforce that 
law — which is only organic — against the State ? Who shall decide 
that the State is keeping troops? The troops would be citizens 
of the State. The Constitution says : ''A well regulated militia 
being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the 
people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Every 
State is supposed to have "a well regulated militia." And they 
keep and bear arms in time of peace. So that the second amend- 
ment to the Constitution practically supersedes the clause first 
quoted above. 

But that clause forbids a State to "engage in war". That is, 
with a foreign Power. As it is clear that the first clause gives 
no power to the President to intervene with military force 
between Kentucky and Ohio, under what clause in the Consti- 
tution could he intervene ? There is a large school of Imperial- 
ists in the Eastern States who, agreeing with John Fiske, 
compare the relation of the States to the National Government, 
to the relation of counties to a State. It is difficult to under- 
sand through what kind of glasses they look. Should two coun- 
ties engage in hostilities, the Governor, who is commander-in- 
chief of the State militia, could order out his troops and arrest 
the belligerents. The county lines would not be a lawful barrier 
in his march. The State establishes the counties as ancillary 
departments of the civil government. The State, through its 
legislature can abolish any county, create new counties, or 
abolish all counties. But what can the federal government do 
to the States, or to any State ? It has no more authority over a 
State than it has over a star, or over any foreign Power, except 
to exercise certain powers that pertain to its own autonomy; 
as, for instance, the authority to alter in specified particulars the 
regulations made by the States for holding elections of Senators 
and Representatives. Even in the case of domestic violence 
within a State the federal government has no authority to 
interfere unless "on application of the legislature or of the 
executive of the State." And the federal government, even in 
this contingency, can not respond to the request of the Governor 
"unless the legislature of the State can not be convened." 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 229 

The States when adopting the Constitution put that inhi- 
bition on each State — ^not to engage in war with a foreign 
Power — because they had delegated the exercise of the war- 
power to Congress. The framers of that instrument did not 
imagine that any two or more States would ever wage war 
inter sese. Hence, nothing was said on the subject. Nor did 
they say that the federal government could not make war on a 
State. But the reason for silence in the latter case is found in 
the very fact of their silence, because the federal government 
has only delegated powers expressly named, whereas the States 
had and have all powers of a sovereign, except those expressly 
delegated. It was not only wholly unnecessary but it would 
have been absurd to say the exercise of this or that power is not 
hereby delegated, after saying "the powers hereby not dele- 
gated are reserved to the States. ' ' Expressio unius est exclusio 
alterius. 

It may be said that the sovereignty of the State as main- 
tained above in the illustration of a war between Kentucky and 
Ohio, proves more than the writer is willing to admit. That is 
to say, if two States can wage war against each other, then it 
must follow that twenty-two States can make war on eleven 
States — as was the case in 1861-5. Yes — that is the inevitable, 
logical conclusion from the premises. The position herein 
assumed is that each of the States was as sovereign in 1783 as 
was Great Britain; that as sovereigns they made the compact 
called the Constitution in 1788 ; that they delegated the exercise 
of certain sovereign powers possessed by each to a common 
agent for the attainment of particular benefits named in general 
terms in the preamble to their agreement, and then in plain un- 
mistakable words specified what their agent could and should do 
— and that it could not and should not do anything not expressly 
named. This position assumes also that the States remained, each 
and all, as completely sovereign after the Union was formed as 
they were when Great Britain signed the treaty in 1783. It must 
be borne in mind that the admission here made is confined to the 
question of sovereignty. The hypothetical war between Kentucky 
and Ohio rests on the assumption of sovereignty, as does also the 
concession that the twenty-two States had the power to make 
war on the eleven Southern States, just as they as sovereigns 



230 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

had the power to make war on any sovereign. The justice of 
that war is an entirely different question, and it lies altogether 
outside of the abstract question of sovereignty of the State. 

As the Northern free States waged war on the slave States 
during four years, they can not escape the conclusion here 
presented. If they were not sovereign, by what authority, or 
law, or right, did they begin and prosecute that war? They 
dodge the question and the logical conclusion by saying the 
federal government and not they, began and prosecuted the 
war. There are two answers to that evasion. The first is that 
the federal government has no power to make war on a State. 
This is so plain that no statesman has ever denied it, or has ever 
asserted that power. The second answer is, the allegation is 
false. When Lincoln decided to invade Virginia, did he move 
with the army of regulars then under his command? No ! He 
appealed to the Governors of the Northern States to organize 
their State militia — to appoint all regimental officers — and to 
forward the regiments to "Washington to be enlisted under his 
command. Lincoln had no authority to order out 75,000 men 
to invade the Confederate States! Whence did they come? 
From the twenty-six States. Who ordered them to take up arms 
against the ten Southern States ? The Governors of the twenty- 
six States. Who were those 75,000 men? They were citizens 
of the twenty-six Northern States. Who armed and clothed 
and fed these 75,000 men? The federal government? That 
government had no title to anything. It was then and is now 
only a trustee for the States. It owned no money — ^no clothes — 
no arms. But as trustee for the benefit of the people of the 
United States it held money and with it bought clothing and 
arms and ammunition. Who supplied this money? It was 
levied of the people. Yes, but what people ? The people of the 
Northern States, of course, because there were no other people 
in or of the Union. Had these people of the States no voice in 
the disposition of that money? After the money passed from 
their hands into the federal treasury did they lose control of it? 
Did the federal government acquire an indefeasible title to it — 
to do with it as the President might decide? If the federal 
government were sovereign then Congress might make a bonfire 
of it and no one could raise a voice to object. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 231 

We will take one State as an illustration. For what one 
State did, the other twenty-one Northern States did. When 
Lincoln called on Andrew, Governor of Massachusetts, for her 
quota of the 75,000, he had the right under the Constitution to 
refuse. Lincoln had no jurisdiction over him, nor over Massa- 
chusetts. The Governor of that State refused the like request of 
President Madison in 1812 to furnish troops. Was that Gov- 
ernor in rebellion against Madison, or the federal government? 
Could he have been arrested and tried as a rebel, or a traitor? 
Could he have been deposed and another Governor installed 
who would comply with Madison's request? If so, by whom? 
Where is the law for such a procedure? Could he have been 
impeached? If so, under what law? But Governor Andrew 
responded to Lincoln with swift delight. Who were the men 
Andrew ordered to organize for Lincoln to command in his / 
invasion of the Southern States? Who were the men Andrew 
commissioned as Colonels, Majors, Captains and Lieutenant*. 
and rushed to Lincoln? Were they some of the drops in that 
great indistinguishable sea of mortals in America whom 
Webster called "the people?" Were they not all citizens and 
inhabitants — and voters, if of age — in and of Massachusetts? 
Did they not go as such citizens? If not, why when enlisted 
were they designated as long as they served, as the First, Sec- 
ond, Third, Fiftieth, Ninetieth Massachusetts regiment? If 
those men sent by Governor Andrew were called up by him from 
the vasty deep of the sea of American people why were not the 
regiments after enlistment simply numbered as are the Regulars 
in the United States Army ? They were not ordered into service 
by Lincoln. They were called for by Lincoln, and ordered out 
by authority of the State of Massachusetts, and, hence, they 
went as Massachusetts' troops in regiments bearing her name. 

Is any more needed to prove that Massachusetts, as a State, 
waged war on the Southern States ? Is it necessary to show that 
what Massachusetts did the other twenty-one Northern States 
did? The only difference between the supposed war made by Ken- 
tucky on Ohio, and the war the twenty-two States waged against 
the eleven Confederate States, is that the twenty-two used 
Lincoln to command the State troops and Congress to vote the 
money. This is just what the States ordained in and by the 



233 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Constitution should be the course pursued when war might occur 
between the United States and any foreign Power. And the 
power delegated to Congress to declare war was for the protec- 
tion of the States and for no other purpose. The man who 
contends that Congress has the right to make war on a State, 
assumes that the framers of the Constitution, and all who voted 
to adopt it, were fit subjects for a lunatic asylum, 

"We will suppose another state of facts which may throw 
some light on State sovereignty from a different angle. We will 
take a war between the United States and the allied Powers of 
Europe caused by the Panama canal — a war not only possible 
but probable. The Nationalists would write of this as a war 
between "The Sovereign Federal Government and the allied 
Powers of Europe." If they did not, then they should make a 
funeral pyre of all the bombastic glorification they have deluged 
the world with about Southern Traitors, Eebels, Kebellion, In- 
surrection and Conspiracy, because they would thereby admit 
that the war of Abolition was between the free and the slave 
States. But would the Sovereign Federal Government be the 
belligerent fighting the Allied Powers? Should the States sit 
still, who would do the fighting? Where are the Sovereign 
Federal Government's militia? Every Sovereign has absolute 
authority over his subjects. He can make war at will and order 
his subjects to the field. Can the President do that? Can 
Congress ? Should Congress enact that all men between certain 
ages should be enrolled, and the President should call on the 
Governors for the men, and the Governors should refuse — what 
then? Who could or would enforce that Act? Suppose the 
people in New England, who have alacrity for opposing war 
that interferes with trade, were to meet in convention and 
declare against the war, and resolve not 'to enlist, could the 
President invade the States and force their citizens to serve ? 

It may be said in reply that Congress has the exclusive power 
to declare war against any foreign power, and that it has power, 
also, "to make all laws which shall be necessary for carrying 
into execution that power." Very true; but those "necessary 
and proper laws" can only be "made" to prosecute war against 
a foreign Sovereign Power. This power "to declare war" 
being one that is inherent to sovereignty, therefore it is claimed 
by the Nationalists that the States have "granted" their sover- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 233 

eign power to Congress to be used at will as all sovereigns have 
the right to exercise it. Let us test this assumption. Suppose 
that Congress should declare war against Mexico, or Great 
Britain, and the people in the States having a bare majority of 
the Congress were opposed to war, could they not stop it ? If they 
could, what becomes of the vaunted, boastful claim of the sov- 
ereignty of Congress? That they could arrest the war no one 
can deny who knows enough of the Constitutoin to understand 
who elect members of Congress. At the first election the people 
could send Congressmen instructed to put a stop to the war, not 
only by statute or resolution, but to refuse to vote a dollar for 
its further prosecution. They could even repeal, instanter, the 
law making appropriation to begin the war. This being unde- 
niably true, where does the sovereign power pertaining to war 
abide ? Is it not in the States ? Does not this demonstrate that 
the war power is "delegated" and not "granted" to Congress? 
But this is not all the States could do. Three-fourths of 
them could not only stop the war but they could amend the 
Constitution by depriving Congress of the power to declare war. 
They could go further and abolish the federal government, and 
each State would then resume — not its sovereignty — but the 
full and free exercise of the few sovereign powers it had, for 
its own benefit, entrusted to a common agent — the Congress. 
The power to enact a law carries with it the power to amend it. 
The power to amend necessarily implies the power to add to, or 
to take from, the law. Furthermore, the power to make a con- 
tract, or compact, or treaty, carries with it the power to change 
the terms of such agreement, and, also, to rescind it. Here 
comes up again Webster's refuge when he attempted to escape 
Calhoun's catapult of logic, to-wit: "We, the people, and not 
the separate people in and of the thirteen States, adopted the 
Constitution." As already said in a preceding chapter, the 
doctrines of State Rights and of State sovereignty are so cog- 
nate, it is almost impossible to present reasons for one that do 
not apply to the other. Webster's position on "We, the peo- 
ple," has been reviewed under "State Rights," but several 
other views will be given under the head of "State 
Sovereignty. ' ' 



234 TRUE VINDICATION OT THE SOUTH 

Suppose it were true that "We, the people" — i. e., the entire 
citizenry of the thirteen States, without regard to State lines or 
State allegiance, made the compact called the Constitution. 
"Would it not follow logically and legally that the people who 
made the comipact have the right and power to change it, to 
amend it, to rescind it? In that case, under the established 
rule that governs democracy, would not a bare majority of the 
qualified voters be sufficient to alter, or to abrogate their own 
agreement? But "We, the people," under their agreement, can 
not do either. They can not change the dot of an i, or the 
cross on the letter t. If " We, the people, ' ' made that agreement, 
is it not the strangest abnegation of power in the history of gov- 
ernments and of compacts and of contracts, that the makers of the 
agreement then said, in substance, "We are done with this busi- 
ness — although we made the agreement exclusively for our own 
advantage and benefit — and we tie our hands forever, whether 
come weal or woe to us, and turn the whole business over to 
unknown, unborn managers who alone shall decide what is best 
for us and our children. ' ' If the contention of Webster and his 
followers be correct, that is what "We, the people," did and 
said. For stupidity, 'assininity, self-immolation, infanticide of 
millions of their own offspring, insane confidence, can the annals 
of the world — outside of lunatic asylums — produce a parallel? 
Yes, "We, the people," after they had made this compact, turned 
their lives, their fortunes, their liberty, their happiness, their 
future and their children's over to the keeping of three-fourths 
of the States. 

But that is not the worst. They said that three-fourths of the 
States can amend, alter, add to or take from this agreement. 
Why did they not say, three-fourths — or two-thirds, or a majority 
of the entire people ? Why did they say * ' States. ' ' As they say 
the sovereign people made the contract, or compact, why did 
they select as their trustee a lot of corporations that have no 
higher rank, no more dignity and no more power among the 
Powers of the world than ' * counties or cities ' ' have ? Why select 
an assembly of imbeciles called States, who had just granted 
away irrevocably to an agent the power to protect themselves 
from being gored to death by John Bull or any other bull ? They 
not only did not say a majority of the entire people should alone 
have the power to amend, but they said — marvelous to relate — 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 235 

that a minority of the people could exercise that power. If 
*'We, the people," made the Constitution, isn't it a still worse 
display of assininity by them to reverse the one great principle 
of democracy that the majority must rule, and to establish the 
rule by a minority of the people ? — ^not only rule by a minority, 
but that minority of the people to have power to change the form 
of government. That they did this is as easily demonstrated as 
that two and two make four. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

WHAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 

WAS AND IS. 

Sovereignty can not abide in anything inanimate. It belongs 
exclusively to moral beings — to a man, or a society of men. 
The government of the United States is not a man, nor men. It 
is nothing more than the combined powers of the States in 
action through their delegates to perform certain duties pre- 
scribed in the Constitution. The government of the United 
States is no more than government by the States united — that 
is, acting conjointly. Every act done by any one of the three 
federal departments is the act of all the States operating 
together. 

Let us test the truth of these propositions. To do this, we 
will take the first federal administration of "Washington. He 
was a private citizen of the State of Virginia. Each of the 
thirteen States held a separate election. They chose electors. 
The electors of each State voted for Washington to be President. 
At the same time the same voters who elected the electors voted 
for members of the legislature of the separate States, The legis- 
latures then and there elected, in turn elected two senators to 
represent each State. These Senators and Representatives 
passed an act to create a federal judiciary. "Washington then 
nominated certain men to be Judges, and the Senators confirmed 
his appointees. The federal government then became operative. 
If any sovereignty was vested at that time it was not in the 
government, for the reason already stated that an inanimate 
thing — as a corporation — cannot take or hold a sovereign power, 
right, or immunity. The federal government was and is nothing 
more than a corporation created by the States. 

But as there can not be a government of men except it be a 
government by men, or a man, the Nationalists are driven to the 
alternative that the alleged sovereignty abides in the men who 
operate the federal government. There are several sufficient 
answers to that contention. The sovereignty of a State is not 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 237 

in the Constitution, nor is it in its three departments — the exec- 
utive, legislative, and judiciary. The sovereignty is in the 
people of the State, They are sovereign without a Constitution 
or an organized government. It is for them to decide how they 
shall be governed. When the thirteen States elected Washing- 
ton President, if they had parted with any part of their sover- 
eign power by adopting the Constitution, it was vested in the 
man and not in his office. If Washington took any sovereign 
power where did it go when his term of office expired? If the 
Congressmen took any sovereign powers what became of them 
on the 4th of March when Congress died by limitation ? Before 
that limitation took effect the people of every State had exer- 
cised their sovereign power to dismiss these servants and either 
to renew their commissions, or to give them to other servants. 
In whom did these powers vest until the first Monday of the 
following December? A congressman-elect is not a congress- 
man. He must be vitalized by an oath and by taking his seat. 

Again : It is an axiom in the Law of Nations that sover- 
eignty is "inalienable, immutable and indivisible." Therefore, 
if Washington, and Congress and the Judiciary, by virtue of 
their offices became invested with sovereign powers, they took 
all the sovereignty the people had who invested them. If they 
did not take all, then all sovereignty remained in the States. 
But this Law of Nations is denied by Nationalists. They say 
the States retained certain sovereign powers and gave certain 
sovereign powers to the federal government. Indeed, as we 
have seen herein, one New England scholar tells us that the 
Constitution divided the sovereignty of the States and granted 
the lion's share to the federal government. This revelation is 
made by John Fiske. It is worthy of repetition at this moment : 
"The State, while it does not possess such attributes of sover- 
eignty as were by our federal Constitution granted to the 
United States, does, nevertheless, possess many very important 
and essential characteristics of a sovereign body." 

"The Constitution granted attributes of sovereignty to the 
United States." In gentle consideration for New England's 
learning, let us strip this deformed metonymy of its swaddling 
and cover it from public view, and then dress it in plain but 
presentable style. This statesman certainly did not intend that 
his ' ' figure of speech ' ' should smother his bantling. Dropping 



338 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

his rhetoric, we get his meaning to be this: "The State, while 
it does not possess such attributes of sovereignty as were by the 
separate peoples of the thirteen States granted to the United 
States". But where does this change leave him as a statesman? 
What are the United States, the alleged grantee, but the thir- 
teen States united — the alleged grantor. And who or what are 
the United States but the people of thirteen States acting to- 
gether? Who made the Constitution but thirteen separate 
peoples of thirteen separate States? Thus we are informed by 
this statesman that the people of thirteen States, by united 
action, granted to the thirteen States united, attributes of sov- 
ereignty. That is to say, the thirteen States, each holding at- 
tributes of sovereignty, granted those attributes to themselves ! 
If the United States had been a nation of separate people, as, 
for instance, the United States of Columbia, and the thirteen 
States acting together had granted their attributes of sover- 
eignty to the United States of Columbia, there would have been 
a grantee entirely distinct from the grantor, and capable of 
accepting the grant. But here is an alleged grant of sovereignty 
by the States to a corporate body of their own making — having 
no separate people under, or within it — of which the grantors 
are the corporators, the stockholders, the directors and the ex- 
clusive owners! Can there be a more glaring, complete, and 
nonsensical reductio ad absurdum ? 

If it were worth while to quote law to those people, who, 
like the heathen, are a law unto themselves, and make their own 
law to suit any purpose at the moment it is needed — as, for 
instance, their "Higher Law" when they decided to free their 
grandfathers' slaves — numerous quotations from the Law of 
Nations could be given to prove the absurdity of their concep- 
tion of the federal government. However, several will be given 
here. It must be remembered that the fundamental belief of 
the Northern people is that the federal government is a Nation. 
They always speak of the ' ' National Government ' ' — ' ' The United 
States Government" — "The National Union." Lincoln thundered 
it in his inaugural speeches. 

First: "Nations, or States, are bodies politic, societies of 
men united together for the purpose of promoting their mutual 
safety and advantage by the joint efforts of their combined 
strength." (Vattel, page 4, Preliminaries.) 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 239 

Second: "From the very design that induces a number of 
men to form a society which has its common interests and which 
if to act in concert, it is necessary that there should be established 
a Public Authority to direct what shall be done by each in re- 
lation to the end of the association. This public authority is 
the Sovereignty, and he or they who are invested with it are the 
Sovereign." 

Third : ' ' Every nation that governs itself, under what form 
soever without dependence on any foreign power, is a Sovereign 
State." 

Now take with these elementary and indisputable principles 
of the Law of Nations one other, to-wit: that "sovereignty is 
immutable, inalienable and indivisible," and we are prepared to 
analyze still further the nature of the federal government. 

First : "A nation is a society of men united together, ' ' etc. 
Is the federal government a society, that is^ a nation of men 
united together ? If so, then that society, by the third quotation 
from the Law of Nations, must be independent of any foreign 
power or sovereign State. In other words, the federal govern- 
ment must be a nation with equal sovereignty with any other 
nation, and, of course, independent of every other nation. It 
must have all the sovereign powers, privileges, rights and immuni- 
ties held by any other nation. And these powers, rights," privi- 
leges and immunities must be immutable^ inalienable and indi- 
visible. We can now proceed with the analysis. 

The federal government has no people under its authority who 
compose the society that constitutes a nation. The federal gov- 
ernment consists of three departments — and these departments 
consist of officers only. One man (Washington) fills one depart- 
ment; twenty-six men (Senators) make one branch of the second 
department; a larger number (Representatives) form the other 
branch of the second department ; and a smaller number (judges) 
constitute the third department. The Secretaries of State, War 
and Navy, Attorney General, etc., are but subordinates in the 
President's or Executive Department. Where are the people that 
compose this sovereign society, or State, or nation ? Do the officers 
of a government make it a nation? Officers command — give 
orders — they do not obey. Less than a hundred men in this entire 
nation and every one an officer. A nation of officers. A nation 
composed exclusively of men to give orders. Every one of them 



240 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

a constituent part of that nation's sovereignty. Where are the 
people who are to obey this triple-handed sovereign? Where 
are the people, subjects or citizens, who owe exclusive allegiance 
to this nation of officers? They are down below in the thirteen 
States, are they? We shall see. 

Again: This nation of officers — all holding sovereignty — 
decides to make war on another, where are its soldiers? Every 
man in the country is a citizen of some of the thirteen States. 
Can the sovereign federal nation issue its sovereign command 
to the citizens of the States to enlist for the war ? If it can not 
it is the only sovereign who could not or can not. No ! Washing- 
ton must submerge his part of the triple sovereignty of the fed- 
eral nation and make a request of the thirteen Governors of the 
States to supply him with soldiers. And the Governor of Massa- 
chusetts has the right under the law of the land to refuse to 
comply with the request, and Washington can exercise his right 
to swear worse than ' ' our army in Flanders ' ' — as tradition gives 
him the ability to do, but he must choke down his sovereignty 
and take it out in swearing. In support of this proposition as 
law, the writer is fortunate in being able to cite no less authority 
than the sovereign State of Massachusetts, in the case of Presi- 
dent Madison against Massachusetts, decided in 1812 by Massa- 
chusetts when she refused to furnish troops, at Madison 's urgent 
solicitation, to repel the armies of Great Britain, and to defend 
Massachusetts. 

In fact, the writer is indebted to that high and prolific au- 
thority for the greatest variety of law that has ever come from 
any hundred States, or Nations, living or dead. The legal pro- 
fession, and also statesmen, are indebted to Massachusetts for the 
theocratic system of judicature whereby eases were decided by a 
verse, or paragraph from Genesis or Exodus, or Numbers, or- 
Deuteronomy, or Joshua, or Job, or the Songs of Solomon ; for a 
Judiciary called a High Court that had jurisdiction over all 
matters ecclesiastical, civil and criminal ; for the expeditious and 
satisfactory judicial procedure of arrest, and then enacting a law 
making the conduct charged a crime, followed by trial, convic- 
tion and punishment — ^vulgarly known as ex post facto laws; 
for hanging neighbors for difference of opinion on abstruse theo- 
logical non-essentials ; for law justifying smuggling ; for the law 
of civilized nations that permits the sale of prisoners of war 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 241 

into perpetual slavery to raise revenue; for the law to sell into 
slavery in tlie West Indies white children to raise revenue because 
they could not pay fines imposed for failure to attend church 
on the Sabbath ; for law punishing Quakers by dragging them 
Bt the cart-tail for refusing to take off the hat ; for the convenient 
law of vesting discretion in magistrates to punish offenders, with- 
out limit to the punishment fixed by law ; for allowing no appeal 
from the sentence of these discretionary officials; for hanging 
women and children charged with witchcraft unless they could 
prove their innocence — ^the State producing no evidence except 
in rebuttal; for denying citizenship unless the person should 
join the theocratic church; etc. 



CHAPTER XXXn. 
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "DELE- 
GATED" AND "GRANTED". 

But the Nationalists insist that the States "granted" cer- 
tain of their sovereign powers to the federal government. This 
is asserted in contradiction of what the alleged grantors say 
they did. They say they "delegated" to their common agent 
certain powers. This assertion by the Nationalists proves, as 
the history of the Puritans demonstrates, that there is no laAv 
they will obey. As already said, the highest evidence of the 
meaning of any agreement is the unanimous testimony of the 
parties to the agreement. Indeed, it is not simply evidence ; it 
is proof irrefutable by any kind of evidence. But when they 
say "delegated," these republicides affirm that the parties did 
not know their oAvn minds and that they made a "grant." 
Thus, to get to their desired goal — a Nation in supreme domin- 
ion over the States — they disregard and override the plainest 
rules of construction recognized by all civilized peoples. 

Again: They assert that the States intended to make a 
Nation that should be "perpetual." As the Constitution is 
silent on that subject, these Nationalists go back to the Con- 
federation where they find the word "perpetual," and they 
graft it on the Constitution. They find at the same spot the 
words "sovereign State", but they refuse to recognize those 
words. If "perpetual" can be interpolated, why can not the 
"sovereign?" There is no reason except the Puritan's perti- 
nacity and determination to rule or ruin. But in this instance 
he is balked. Neither word can be written into that instru- 
ment. Neither can be used to explain it. It needs no 
interpreter. And the assumption of these grafters has no 
parallel except in the ""raft" so prevalent among them that 
the nations of Europe have been holding their noses since the 
explosion of the Credit Mobilier in 1870. There is no canon of 
the law more imperious and inflexible than the one that forbids 
the effort to graft a word on a writing that is so plain in meaning 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 243 

that the wayfaring man, though a fool, can understand it. 
There is not a court in Christendom that will permit any law- 
yer, whether he be a Solon or a shyster, to use any word directly 
or indirectly to explain a writing that explains itself, on the 
plea that the makers intended to say more or less than what 
they wrote. 

But the boldest attempt to deflower the English language 
and thereby to convert a friendly agreement between republics 
into a consolidated, unified nation and despotism, has been 
done by defiant insistence that the word "delegated" means 
"granted." Though these two words are not as antipodal as 
black and white, nevertheless, they are as variant in meaning 
as are tenancy at will and a conveyance in fee simple of the 
land to its occupant. The difference is as great as between 
the peace and happiness that reigned throughout the States 
when the Constitution was agreed to, and the bloody ruin, the 
devastation, anguish, agony, demoniac fanaticism and death 
that reigned seventy-two years thereafter. "Delegated" was 
the angel of peace — "granted" was the key that opened wide 
the gates of Hell. 

Lincoln, so ignorant of the A. B. C. of commercial law as 
to declare in his inaugural that "a copartnership can not be 
dissolved without the consent of all the partners," consumed 
by ambition — "the most powerful of excitements" — to be 
known in history as "The Great Emancipator," exposed 
greater ignorance by announcing, almost in the same breath, 
that the Union must be perpetual because that word is found 
in the Articles of Confederation. He, too, caught the cry that 
the Constitution needed explaining, and, as it said nothing 
of perpetuity, the framers of it meant perpetuity because the 
colonists in forming what they expressly called "a league of 
friendship" used the word "perpetual." He, too, refused to 
see in the same league of friendship the words "delegated" 
■and "each sovereign Stnte." Why were they not as probative 
as the word "perpetual?" They were and are, but they, like 
the flaming sword of the Cherubim, stood in the path between 
his mad ambition and the Constitution, which to that hour had 
been the tree of life to millions, but, from that hour, has borne 
nothing but apples of Sodom. 



CHAPTER XXXm. 
ABOUT THE WORD "PERPETUAL"— A 

MEDLEY OF LAW AND FACT. 

The Nationalists contend that the Union was formed to be 
not only one and indivisible, and to have powers superior to 
those of the States, but also that it is to be perpetual. Webster 
so taught, and Lincoln so declared in his Inaugural address, 
1861. He said: '*! hold that, in contemplation of Universal 
Law, and of the Constitution, the Union of the States is per- 
petual." Webster in the debate with Hayne, said: "The 
Constitution, Sir, regards itself as perpetual and immortal." 
"Perpetuity," said Lincoln, "implied, if not expressed, is the 
fundamental law of all National Governments. Continue to 
execute all the provisions of our National Constitution, and 
the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it 
except by some action not provided for in the instrument 
itself." 

Before quoting further I beg to call attention to the medley 
of law and fact in the above language. First, as to facts. In 
the first two sentences Lincoln assumes that the Union of the 
States is a National Government. This reduced to the simplest 
terms means that the United States, by the Consitution, are a 
Nation. In the first sentence he assumes that the Union of the 
States, by the law of the Constitution, is to be perpetual. In 
the next sentence that "perpetuity is the fundamental law 
of all National Governments." What he affirms of the "Union 
of the States" he also affirms as the law of National Govern- 
ments. He thus affirms that the Union is a Nation. A nation, 
according to all writers on the "Law of Nations", consists of 
a number of men associated together in one body, which is 
clothed with all the powers, rights, privileges, exemptions, et 
cetera, that belong to a man in a state or condition of nature, 
and each and every one of those attributes is immutable, indi- 
visible and inalienable; when in that condition the man is a 
sovereign; when he and other men agree to associate to- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 245 

gether, and one of their number is chosen to rule over them, 
each surrenders his natural sovereignty and vests his attributes 
in the ruler as a king, a monarch, or emperor; and their ruler 
cannot surrender any one of his attributes of sovereignty with- 
out the consent of his subjects. These authorities on the Law 
of Nations affirm further that such a society of men is a 
Nation, and that men (human beings) are necessary to the 
formation, operation and perpetuity of a nation. 

Lincoln is trying to prove that the government of which he 
had just been elected by a few of the States as the head or 
President, is perpetual, that is to say, is indestructible ' ' except 
by some internal action not provided for in the Constitution." 
To establish that proposition he begins by assuming as a fact 
already proved and admitted, the main fact involved in the 
controversy between the North and the South, and which was 
never asserted or assumed by any one as true until Webster so 
asserted in 1830. That fact, as Lincoln words it, is that the 
Union of the States is a National Government, which expres- 
sion reduced to its simplest form is — *'the government estab- 
lished by the Union of the States is a Nation." Up to that 
date (1830) the makers of the Constitution and their descend- 
ants were of the opinion that the States had formed a Republic. 
The significant fact must be noted just here that Webster and 
Lincoln differ, ex profundo ad coelum, on the origin of the 
Constitution, and, of course, of the Union. Webster's life 
preserver, as he imagined, "We, the people," framed and 
adopted the Constitution. Lincoln, not speaking as paid coun- 
sel, says the States formed the Union. He does not use the 
word "formed." He avoids circumlocution — to-wit: as there 
were no people but those in the States, and as the people in 
the States, each State acting separately, adopted the Consti- 
tution, therefore, the States adopted it and this formed the 
Union. Lincoln's mind was not so vast — so oceanic — with deep, 
dark caverns where dwelt the Sophist, the Flatterer, the meta- 
physical Seducer, who, at the psychological moment, crawled 
out from their slimy dens to teach their Great Neptune there 
was no immorality — no injustice — ^no treason in selling official 
judgment, provided you know you are too strong to be swayed 
from an even balance by weight of the gold. Lincoln, there- 
fore, just as he drove his axe into the rails — went straight to 



/ 
246 TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 

the mark and said ** Union of", that is, Union made by ''the 
States." And as the Constitution alone made the Union — as 
there could be no Union without it — the States made the 
Constitution. 

Resuming the discussion, we return to Lincoln's opinion of 
"the Nation" — our Nation — with the caution that we must not 
forget that the time when all the discussion in and out of 
Congress occurred must be confined to the years during which 
the States adopted the twelve amendments, I say this, here 
and now, because Webster based a part of his speech in reply 
to Calhoun on what in legal phrase is called the argumentum 
ab inconvenienti — the inconvenience that would result from a 
decision in favor of this or that side of a case, or question. 

In a case before a Court between two copartners under a 
written agreement, when one has rescinded and the other is 
claiming damages caused by the withdrawal, and the right to 
withdraw turns on the terms of the agreement, as well might 
the plaintiff attempt to set up the plea that the seceding par- 
ner had no right to withdraw because there were debts left 
unpaid at the time of the secession. As the Common Law 
would compel the seceding partner to pay his share of the 
debts, so, in the case of a seceding State the Law of Nations 
binds it to meet its proportion of obligations incurred jointly 
by the States. And should the seceding State refuse to come 
to an adjustment, then, and then only, according to the highest 
code of laws known on earth — ''The Law of Nations" — could 
the other State resort to armed force to compel the seceded 
State to do "justice." This is the law that the States remain- 
ing in the Union were bound by justice, right, and humanity to 
obey. Those matters have no bearing on the question of State 
Rights, State Sovereignty, and the powers of the federal gov- 
ernment. They are questions to be settled by and between 
the States after they might be separated — and for which the 
Confederate States sent Commissioners to "Washington. 

We return to Mr. Lincoln's Inaugural: He declared that 
the Union of the States created a Nation. I will set over against 
his partisan opinion the decision of a hundred or more sover- 
eigns who governed the civilized nations for a thousand years, 
and whose judgment and wisdom have been recorded by such 
scholars and jurists as Grotius, Puffendorf, Baron de Wolf, 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 247 

Hobbes, Vattel, Barbeyrac, Wicquefoot, Selden, Valeri, Clerac, 
Pothier, Burlamaqui (quoted by Calhoun and Webster made no 
reply), Emerigan, Roccus, Santerna, Maline, Malloy, and many 
others, passim, I quote the Law of Nations from Vattel : ' ' Sev- 
eral sovereign and independent States may unite themselves 
together by a perpetual confederacy, without ceasing to be, 
each individually, a perfect State. They will together consti- 
tute a federal republic ; their joint deliberations will not impair 
the sovereignty of each member, though they may, in certain 
respects, put some restraint on the exercise of it in virtue of 
voluntary engagements. A person does not cease to be free 
and independent, when he is obliged to fulfill engagements 
which he has voluntarily contracted." Omitting the word 
"perpetual" we have in this extract the precise confederacy 
the thirteen "Sovereign and Independent States" united and 
established in 1787. They arranged for joint deliberations every 
year by sending representatives to legislate for their "safety 
and advantage" in a body they called the Congress. They 
appointed one man (the President) to execute the laws their 
deliberative body might enact, and appointed Judges to con- 
strue those laws and specified the subjects and persons over 
which and whom their Judges could take jurisdiction. They 
set specified limits to the matters over which each of their 
three agencies were to have control — these and nothing more. 
There was no oversight made by the creator — the only fault, 
from the first, has been in their agents, by usurping powers 
not embraced in their written commissions. Since 1830 they 
have stretched that sacred instrument and usurped forbidden 
powers until, in 1860, they announced that they were the 
reigning sovereign — a Nation, a World Power — and the orig- 
inal sovereigns were mere dependencies — vassals to obey them, 
or be whipped like wayward children. 

The word "perpetual" requires a passing notice only be- 
cause the Nationalists — Mr. Webster in the lead and Lincoln 
proclaiming Webster's heresy — insist that the confederacy was 
intended by the States to be perpetual. They violate every 
rule followed by learned Judges in construing contracts made 
by individuals, up to wills, deeds, conventions, constitutions, 
and treaties made by sovereigns, by writing into the Constitu- 
tion, that contains no ambiguity, words intentionally omitted; 



248 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

hy taking its preamble to construe ''the States" to mean "the 
people", and the words ''general welfare" to mean unlimited 
power; and these Nationalists will, no doubt, contend that 
while sovereign States can form a perpetual confederacy, they 
cannot form one and limit its duration. Another quotation 
from Lincoln's Inaugural, 1861, will reveal the length to which 
Nationalists go to patch and pad the Constitution. He says: 
"Again, if the United States be not a government proper" 
(Webster's phrase), "but an association of States in the 
nature of a contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably 
unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party 
to a contract may violate it — break it — so to speak, but does it 
not require all to lawfully rescind it?" 

Here are two propositions announced in the Socratic form 
of interrogation to show they are undeniable, that can not 
stand a moment before the law. No — the "United States are 
not a Government proper." They established a government to 
be operated by such of their citizens as, in each State, are the 
"moral persons" (Vattel) constituting the sovereignty of the 
State. The government thus established and operated may be 
a "Government proper," or a Government very improper ( as 
the South has learned through great tribulation), but the 
sovereign government was in each State and in operation be- 
fore the States established another government to do certain 
acts which, without it, each of the thirteen States would have 
to perform. 

The second proposition as to contracts is entirely outside 
of the question Lincoln was trying to clear up. He takes a 
commercial contract — one made by individuals — as on all fours 
with a contract, or compact, made by sovereigns. The first is 
to be governed as construed by the common law, or statute 
law, or civil law, of force within a State or other sovereignty. 
Whether one partner (an individual) can lawfully break it, or 
rescind it, depends on the terms of the contract and the law 
of the State. When men "in a state of nature, free and inde- 
pendent," come together to form a society (call it a State, 
Nation, or what not) Vattel states the law to be that "each 
member resigns a part of his rights in a state of nature to the 
body of the society, and that there exists in it an authority of 
commanding all the members, of giving them laws, and of 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 249 

compelling those who shall refuse to obey! Nothing' of the 
kind can be conceived or supposed to subsist between nations. ' ' 
To illustrate : If while Lincoln was living in Kentucky, there 
had been no government — no civil laws of force — he would 
have been in a state of nature. Had a neighbor engaged him 
to split a hundred rails and he had done the work, and the 
neighbor refused to pay, Lincoln could have mauled him to his 
heart's content, and no power on earth could have punished 
him. But, if Kentucky had been under the government of men 
who had ''resigned a part of their natural rights", and had 
laws regulating the conduct of each man or member, Lincoln 
could have been punished for assault and battery. 

His illustration may be good or bad according as the law 
regulating private contracts might be. But he was beyond his 
depth in trying to apply the law to a contract, or compact, 
made by sovereigns. The Law of Nations alone can be 
invoked, and by that law a sovereign is not forbidden to break 
or rescind a contract, or compact. But he is bound by an obli- 
gation imposed by the Law of Nations to do justice — to make 
his co-compacter compensation for any damage the secession 
from the compact may cause. And should he fail so to do, the 
injured sovereign or sovereigns may resort to retaliation or 
even to war. 

The seceded States offered through Commissioners to com- 
ply fully and fairly with that obligation. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

SOME COMMENTS ON A LETTER OF 

CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL. 

The analj'-sis of the Constitution and the rights of each 
State would not be complete without a study of the opinion 
of John Marshall, Chief Justice, as expressed in a letter to his 
cousin, as follows : 

Richmond, May 7th, 1833. 
"My Dear Sir: 

"I am much indebted to you for your pamphlet on Federal 
Relations, which I have read with much satisfaction. No sub- 
ject, as it seems to me, is more misunderstood or more 
perverted. You have brought into view numerous important 
historical facts which, in my judgment, remove the foundation 
on which the Nullifiers and Seceders have erected that super- 
structure which overshadows our Union. You have, I think, 
shown satisfactorily that we never have been perfectly distinct, 
independent societies, sovereign in the sense in which the Nul- 
lifiers use the term. When colonies, we certainly were not. 
We were parts of the British empire, and although not directly 
connected with each other so far as respected government, we 
were connected in many respects, and were united to the same 
stock. The steps we took to effect separation were, as you have 
fully shown, not only revolutionary in their nature, but they 
were taken conjointly. Then, as now, we acted in many re- 
spects as one people. The representatives of each colony acted 
for all. Their resolutions proceeded from a common source, 
and operated on the whole mass. The army was a continental 
army commanded by a continental general, and supported 
from a continental treasury. The Declaration of Independence 
was made by a common government, and was made for all 
the States. 

"Everything has been mixed. Treaties made by Congress 
have been considered as binding all the States. Some powers 
have been exercised by Congress, some by the States separately. 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 251 

The lines were not strictly drawn. The inability of Congress 
to carry its legitimate powers into execution has gradually 
annulled those powers practically, but they always existed in 
theory. Independence was declared 'in the name and by the 
authority of the good people of these colonies.' In fact we 
have always been united in some respects, separate in others. 
We have acted as one people for some purposes, as distinct 
societies for others. I think you have shown this clearly, and 
in so doing have demonstrated the fallacy of the principle on 
which either nullification, or the right of peaceful, constitu- 
tional secession is asserted. 

"The time is arrived when these truths must be more 
generally spoken, or our Union is at an end. The idea of com- 
plete sovereignty of the State converts our government into 
a league, and, if carried into practice, dissolves the Union. 
"I am, dear sir, 

''Yours affectionately, 

"J. MARSHALL. 
"Humphrey Marshall, Esq., 
Frankfort, Ky." 

It is not without full knowledge of the weight of authority 
that even the mention of his name bears on the judicial mind 
in America, even now — seventy-seven years after the ermine 
fell from his venerable form and he lay do\\Ti to pleasant 
dreams — that I consider the utterances of John Marshall. And 
it is with the greatest circumspection and with diffidence that 
even Judges should call into question his decisions on subjects 
in which political bearings did not have a tendency to bias his 
judgment. It is well known that he, early in life, adopted the 
view of the Constitution and the rights of the States so strenu- 
ously advocated by the Party called Federalists, headed by 
Alexander Hamilton. And it is, also, well known that when- 
ever questions arose growing out of or involving, collaterally, 
those causes of political and judicial division, his bent was 
-always with the Federalists. His moral integrity was beyond 
reproach, or even an evil thought, and his mental leaning never 
varied, and he died, as he had lived, a Federalist. As this 
letter contains, in condensed form, his opinion against the 
rights of the States, that is, against the sovereignty of each 
State, I shall not look beyond it for other expressions by him 



252 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

on that subject. It was written but two years before his death, 
and after his body had been tormented for years by an incur- 
able disease. As we shall see, the letter has not the perspicuity 
that illumines his judicial decisions, but, although his frame 
had long been racked by pain, we are not to conclude that 
there is any evidence of senility in this opinion. It will save 
time and words to bear in mind that the whole question between 
the North and the South, from Washington's first administra- 
tion to this date, turns on the sovereignty of each State, when 
Great Britain acknowledged that each State, by name, was 
sovereign, free and independent. It is on that immovable base 
that I have built the foregoing argument, and it is on that 
assumption that I venture to question the correction of the 
opinion given in this letter. 

As already said in another chapter, in my opinion, on the 
assumption that each State was a sovereign before 1787, the 
right solution of the question can be found nowhere except in 
the Laws of Nations — laws adopted by sovereigns for their 
guidance and conduct, inter sese — and laws before which all 
other enactments must give way, because the highest human 
organization is a Nation. The first three sentences in the first 
paragraph of the letter require no comment, because they show 
only his dissent from the contention of "Nullifiers and 
Seceders," The fourth sentence contains the opinion I shall 
consider. That sentence is as follows: **You have, I think, 
shown satisfactorily that we never have been perfectly distinct, 
independent societies, sovereigns in the sense in which the 
Nullifiers use the terms." By "term" he means "sovereign 
societies." He then proceeds to state the reasons for that 
opinion, and I will consider briefly each sentence or reason. 

"When Colonies, we certainly were not." No one ever 
imagined the colonies were sovereigns. 

**We were parts of the British empire, and although not 
directly connected with each other so far as respected 
govemment, we were connected in many respects and were 
united to the same stock." Each colony had its separate gov- 
ernment, just as each of our Territories after organization has 
its own government, but they were not connected, directly nor 
indirectly. One was carried on subject to regulation or repeal 
by Parliament; the other subject to control, approval, or 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 253 

repeal by Congress. The colonies were in no sense connected 
and united, until 1774 by the "Articles of Association," when 
they agreed to make common cause against the same stock — 
Great Britain — and in 1777 by the Confederation formed to 
supplant the Association of 1774. But in neither case did any 
colony to any degree change or surrender in any particular 
its powers, its rights, or internal social, or political economy. 
On the contrary, in "The Articles of Confederation" entered 
into as "a league of friendship" to make a better defense 
against Great Britain, the colonies expressly guarded against 
any conclusion or suggestion of any amalgamation, or more 
than a combination for defensive war, in Article II, in these 
words: "Each State (all still colonies) "retains its sovereign- 
ty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, 
and right which is not by this Confederation expressly 
delegated to the United States in Congress assembled." Be- 
fore the Articles of Association, which were a war measure 
only, the Colonies had no more political connection with each 
other than any one of them had with Canada. The only con- 
nection they had with each other, except geographical, was 
their allegiance to the same empire. And although in the 
Confederation they agreed it should be "perpetual," that was 
but one item of the many agreed to in the thirteen Articles, 
and has no bearing on the question of separate existence, free- 
dom and independence of the Colonies, They knew best what 
their relations to each other were, and as they expressed that 
knowledge by saying each retained its sovereignty, freedom, 
and independence, it is impertinence, say the publicists, to 
assert they did not mean or understand what they said. 

The seventh sentence is strictly true, but it proves nothing. 

Eighth sentence : "Then as now we acted in many respects 
as one people." Except in the Association of 1774, and the 
Confederation, and the Declaration of Independence, there is 
no historic evidence that the Colonies, in a single instance, 
acted as one people. I have already shown that in the first and 
second they united their soldiers from necessity to prevent 
conquest and hanging, and that in the second they declared 
each State to be sovereign, free and independent, and in the 
third instance (the Declaration) they declared each Colony to 
be a "free and independent State." 



254 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Ninth sentence: "Their resolutions proceeded from a 
common source and acted on the whole mass." 

What resolutions the Chief Justice does not explain. If 
history records any resolutions that did not relate to the im- 
pending hostilities, or the actual war for independence, it has 
not been the good fortune of the writer to see or read them. 
The resolutions just before and during the war were on the 
same line as the much more solemn declarations in and by the 
"Association" and the "Confederation" and the "Declara- 
tion" — all were to aid in the common cause against a common 
foe. 

The tenth and eleventh sentences contain statements per- 
fectly true, but all the facts occurred or existed during the 
war waged by the colonies conjointly. The last clause of the 
last or eleventh sentence — "and was made for all the States" 
— seems to have been lapsus pennae or linguae — a slip of the 
pen, or tongue. It carried the Chief Justice further than he 
intended to go. "And was made for all the States," — ^not for 
one consolidated State or Nation, made up of all the people in 
the colonies, as Webster tried to prove by the preamble — but 
for all the States. If for more than one State, the word ".all" 
must include two States, and when we get two States, we can 't 
stop until we include thirteen States. 

In the next paragraph the Chief Justice passes from colo- 
nial years to the period from 1787 to 1833, when he was 
writing. Unless we look through the medium always before 
the eyes of this Federalist, his meaning is not as clear as his 
decision on non-partisan questions. He says: "Everything has 
been mixed." Treaties made by Congress, that is, by the 
President and the Senate were intended by all the States that 
made the Constitution to bind "all the States,''' The States 
expressly delegated the exercise of some of their powers to 
Congress and reserved all other powers to be exercised by 
themselves. He says: "The lines were not strictly drawn." 
They seem to have been as strictly drawn as human learning 
and caution could draw them. That sentence is not clear. He 
says : "The inability of Congress to carry its legitimate powers 
into execution has gradually annulled those powers practi- 
cally." Here is Federalism rampant. The vast majority of 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 255 

the people complain of the ability of Congress to exercise 
powers not delegated to it, to the extent of practically 
"annulling" the powers of all the States expressly reserved. 

The Chief Justice then drifts back to the Colonies, and 
quotes from the last paragraph of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence — "in the name and by the authority of the good people 
of these Colonies," but he omits what they declared, to-wit; 
that "the colonies are and of right ought to be free and inde- 
pendent States." He omitted, also, the fact that the good 
people of the colonies, through their Representatives in 
Congress, made that Declaration, and that they wrote first the 
name of each State and signed their names beneath, viz: "New 
Hampshire" — "Representatives, Josiah Bartlett, William 
Whipple, Matthew Thornton," and so on down to Georgia, the 
last: "Georgia;" and, beneath, her Representatives — Button 
Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton — signed their names. 

These Representatives then resolved that their "Declaration 
be proclaimed in each of all the States." 

I have reviewed the reasons assigned by the Chief Justice 
for the opinion expressed in the third sentence of paragraph 
one and repeated in the last sentence of paragraph two, and in 
the third or last paragraph. This opinion will be considered 
in the chapters on Sovereignty and Allegiance. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 
SOVEREIGNTY AND ALLEGIANCE. 

It is now opportune to discuss the all-important question — 
who were the Rebels, the Disunionists, the Traitors in that 
fratricidal war that has no parallel. Senator Reverdy Johnson 
briefly stated the issue that history will decide. He said, in the 
United States Senate: *'If secession was valid in any State, 
then the North was the aggressor, and the suppression was a 
great crime. Admit the validity of an ordinance of Secession, 
and it follows that the Unionists were traitors to their obliga- 
tions to the Constitution." 

The reader will please note his words — "the Unionists were 
traitors to their obligations to the Constitution" — as much that 
follows is in reply to the fallacy of that hypothesis. It is not 
my purpose to discuss now the right to secede, as that has 
already been fully considered. However, that question comes 
in collaterally, as it is, to some extent, involved in the discus- 
sion of sovereignty and allegiance. It is the last (allegiance) 
that involves the idea, or political creed, expressed in the 
words of Reverdy Johnson which the reader has been requested 
to bear in mind. Johnson's view of allegiance is expressed in 
four forms by the Nationalists or Imperialists — to-wit; alle- 
giance to the Constitution, allegiance to the Union, allegiance 
to the Federal Government, and allegiance to the United States 
— each and all being used as equivalents. 

Webster's dictionary (1904) under the word ** Allegiance" 
reads — 1st: **The tie or obligation of a citizen, or subject, to 
his government or ruler ; the duty of fidelity to a king, govern- 
ment, or state. 2nd : The paramount allegiance of a citizen of 
the United States has been decided to be due to the general 
government before that (allegiance) due to his own State." 
In all prior editions of "Webster's Unabridged, the latter or 
second definition is not given. We are not told who so 
"decided," nor where the decision is recorded. The American 
Cyclopedic Dictionary gives allegiance as "the tie or obligation 
a subject owes to a sovereign, or a citizen to the government, 
or State." 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 257 

The second definition in "Webster's dictionary is clearly the 
New England interpolation since the War Between the States. 
It is a definition given by soldiers, and cannon and bayonets 
used by foreign hirelings and negro troops. It was not the defi- 
nition of New England's scholars, statesmen and patriots in 
the year 1812 when she refused to obey "the general govern- 
ment" that called on her to send her soldiers to help in defense 
of the country, including herself. It will be seen that her late 
definition of allegiance is not so accurate as her first in 1812, 
however disgraceful and contemptible her action was in refus- 
ing to aid in the common defense. 

To treat fairly and fully the question presented so clean-cut 
by Reverdy Johnson, it is necessary to revert to the five years 
between the close of the Revolution in 1783 and the adoption 
of the Constitution in 1788. For it must be borne in mind that 
the clearest view of the rights and powers of each of the thir- 
teen States can be taken within three short periods — to-wit, 
first, from 1783 when the independence and sovereignty of the 
States was acknowledged by Great Britain, to June 21st, 1788, 
when New Hampshire, the ninth State, agreed to the Constitu- 
tion, and it became binding on the nine States; second, the 
period that elapsed before the four remaining States — North 
Carolina, Virginia, New York and Rhode Island — accepted the 
Constitution; and, third, the time when the last of the twelve 
amendments were added to the Constitution in 1804, twenty- 
one years in all. 

The reason for limiting the view to these twenty-one years 
is that after 1804 no change was made in the Constitution that 
could possibly affect the rights and sovereignty of each of the 
thirteen States as they existed then; nor the rights, independ- 
ence and sovereignty of each of those nine States as they stood 
from 1783 to 1788, nor of the status of the four States until 
they followed the nine and adopted the Constitution. How 
far, if at all, the rights, independence and sovereignty of each 
State were modified, abridged or surrendered by adopting the 
Constitution, is the problem before us. As they were declared 
by Great Britain "free, independent and sovereign" in 1783, 
the proof of the affirmation that they lost some attributes of a 
sovereign by agreeing to the Constitution devolves on the 
Imperialists who so affirm. 



258 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

To simplify to some extent the propositions to be now dis- 
cussed, let us take one State. Of the thirteen we select Massa- 
chusetts. And this not only because we are assured by her 
historians, statesmen, philosophers and poets, that it is from 
her that all our blessings flow but also because it would be an 
act of philanthropy, however much (as we know) it would be 
against her desire and greed, to raise her from the servile, 
humiliating and degraded position to which her statesmen and 
sons of whom she is so proud, betrayed and sank her by throw- 
ing off their allegiance to her and transferring it to another 
government — another "sovereign" — and thereby lowered her 
rank from her regality among the sovereigns of the world, to a 
petty, contemptible fragment called by her orators ' ' a satellite 
revolving around the great Central Sun" that was manufac- 
tured by thirteen satellites and set up in an imperial domain 
ten miles square. By her own confession, Massachusetts has 
sunk a thousand leagues below that mongrel whelp named ' * The 
Black Republic of Hayti," and, by the classification of States 
made by John Fiske, her specialist in grading the rank of towns, 
cities, states and nations, she is just an inch or two higher 
than was Duluth before it was discovered and introduced to 
the public by the Hon. Proctor Knott of Kentucky. 

There is this to be said, however, in apology for the sub- 
mission of Massachusetts to her master — she has always been 
the favorite in the harem, and gets the best. She is invited 
to the first table, while her sisters must be content with what 
she leaves only because she is glutted. She and her five neigh- 
boring sisters have always occupied seats at the right hand of 
their lord at the feast so lavish and luxurious, spread by their 
sovereign's munificence, and have been given the royal pre- 
rogative to dictate to all the other inmates — now forty-seven — 
what and how much they may eat, wherewith they shall be 
clothed, what amount of pin-money they may spend, and, in 
doling out these supplies to keep body and soul together, they 
can, in addition to getting enough to gratify the greed of any 
avarice, except their own, take a rake-off from the other forty- 
seven of any per cent, their sovereign sultan's head steward 
may name. And all the five have to do to get the rake-off is 
to make an humble bow and curtsey — then in a few meek 
plaintive tones repeat Falstaff's sorrowful query: "Do I not 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 259 

bate — do I not dwindle? Canst thou not see we are of an 
eagle's talon in the waist, and we can creep into any alderman's 
thumb-ring? Will you who have so much pleasure in us, have 
us grope and stumble like Pharaoh's lean kine? Will you 
starve your beloved?" Whether the head steward be named 
McKinley, or Dingley, or Aldrich, or Payne, or Taft, the af- 
fected plaint of the six favorites of the sovereign-sultan never 
fails — the ''rake-off" is freely, blindly, exceedingly handed 
out, but not without the gratitude expectant of future favors 
in return to the sovereign's chief butler and his corps of 
workers, to keep them at the job. 

However, the question of deepest and perilous moment is 
not what Massachusetts is content to be, but what she was 
and is. Was she a sovereign full-fledged and equipped from 
1783 when Great Britain so declared, to the day she adopted 
the Constitution? To assume that she was would be ignoring 
the opinion of America's greatest Jurist — John Marshall, who 
is followed by Joseph Story and Judge Cooley and other com^ 
mentators on the Constitution. Judge Marshall's language in 
the previously quoted letter to his kinsman is: "You have, I 
think, shown satisfactorily that we (the States) never have 
been perfectly distinct, independent societies, sovereign in the 
sense in which the Nulliiiers use the term." It may be more 
satisfactory to the reader to turn back and read the entire 
letter, although the above quotation is the letter condensed. 
This opinion assumes that because the thirteen colonies, each 
admittedly separate and distinct, working under separate char- 
ters, acted conjointly in resisting the aggressions by Great 
Britain;; — first, under the Articles of Association; second, in 
framing the Declaration of Independence; and third, under 
the Articles of Confederation ; therefore they were not distinct, 
independent societies and sovereign when in 1783 Great 
Britain, in Article I of the treaty, wrote these words: "His 
Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States — 
namely — New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island 
and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New 
Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North 
Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free, sovereign 
and independent States." Can language be more explicit? 



260 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Before 1774 the colonies were as separate and distinct as 
any nations could be. The persecutions by their mother coun- 
try drove them together to make common defense. Their joint 
action was during their colonial period. But when they devel- 
oped into thirteen nations, or sovereigns, what possible relation 
did they sustain to each other that could impair or abridge 
the perfect sovereignty of each? It is true the Confederation 
of 1778, formed by the colonies, was not formally abrogated 
in 1783, when they became States, but it did not by any provi- 
sion forbid or prevent the parties to the Confederation to 
become sovereign States. If this be not true, there was but 
one other result, and that was the acknowledgment of the 
freedom, sovereignty and independence of the undistinguish- 
able mass of three million Americans as one people under the 
name of "The United States." Has any one ever advanced 
that idea? "Who would admit it if advanced? That theory, if 
true, would make hotch-potch of our entire people, and oblit- 
erate all State lines and boundaries. It would make but one 
people, one government, and that government a sovereignty. 
It would make fools of all the statesmen in America from 1783 
to this hour. But, discarding this absurdity, there is left but 
the one conclusion — that each State in 1783 became a member, 
free and untrammelled, of the world's family of sovereign 
nations. 

But there is another answer to Judge Marshall's theory of 
the States' limited or imperfect sovereignty. This view takes 
in the second division of time made above, to-wit, the short 
period between the adoption of the Constitution by the ninth 
State, New Hampshire, and the entrance into the Union of the 
four remaining States. Judge Marshall's language is "We 
(the States) have never been perfectly distinct, independent 
societies, sovereign in the sense in which the Nullifiers use the 
term." The word "societies" is used by him in the sense of 
"nations" — as all writers on the Law of Nations use it. Vat- 
tel, in defining a nation, uses the singular number, "society." 
So does Judge Cooley. 

The answer to Judge Marshall is found in the status of the 
four States not in the Union. What were they during the in- 
terval between June 21st, 1788, when the Union took effect, 
and the day each one entered the Union? They were not in 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 261 

the Union. The Confederation of thirteen States was no more. 
It had been thrown to the winds. It was nothing but a mem- 
ory, and a sad one at that. The four States not in the Union 
were not the old Confederation. Nine of the Confederation 
had shuffled it off, and had formed another entirely different. 
These four had no political connection with Great Britain, their 
mother. They had none with the nine States who were in a 
new combination called a Union. What, then, were they? 
Each was a ** society." Each had an Executive, a Legislature 
and a Judiciary, and the citizens of each owed no allegiance to 
any power, nation or sovereign on earth, excepting one, and 
that was their own State. Can it be questioned, in the light of 
the Law of Nations, that each of the four States — Rhode Island, 
New York, Virginia and North Carolina — was a "perfectly 
distinct, independent and free sovereign?" Can this question 
be seriously debated? This being true as to the four States 
before they entered the Union, does it not necessarily follow 
that each of the other nine States was a "perfectly distinct, 
independent and free sovereignty" before they formed the 
Union? Suppose that those four States which doubted and 
debated — hesitated and feared to enter the lion's den, had 
decided wisely (in view of the war made by States on States) 
to keep away from the entrance where all tracks are inward 
and none coming out, what would they have been among the 
nations of the earth? Each would have been as perfect a 
nation, or sovereignty, as their mother was who had just 
acknowledged their majority and started them in life to make 
their living with all the responsibilities, rights, duties, immuni- 
ties and dignity with which the mother was clothed. 

The next question in order is — What change took place 
when each State entered the Union ? As each was indisputably 
sovereign before entering, did she strip herself of the richest 
endowment a people can possess and enjoy in this life and donate 
it to another? Did Massachusetts step down from her regal 
throne, and in token of abdication of her royalty, her dignity 
and equality among sovereigns, lay her crown at the feet of 
an irresponsible and dependent creature she had helped to 
make? Did she do this with full knowledge that, if her 
neighboring sisters, impelled by fanaticism or avarice, or in- 
stigated by the Devil, should steal her property, incite her 



262 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

laborers to insurrection, to strikes, and killing her sons, she 
would have no power to protect herself by force of arms ; and 
that the creature in whose favor she had abdicated the right 
and duty of self-protection inherent in every nation, could not 
raise a hand to protect her? Did Massachusetts voluntarily 
transfer the loyalty and allegiance of her sons and daughters 
to this creature of her own hands? Or did she generously 
divide the allegiance due to her, and confer a part of that 
right essential to the protection and life of every sovereign, 
whether a person or the collective citizens of a republic, on the 
creature she had assisted to make? If so, how was that alle- 
giance divided? Was it halved, or did she quarter it and 
generously give three-quarters to the creature — ^reserving for 
herself but one-quarter of the allegiance of her citizens? Has 
Massachusetts approved and accepted the new, the amended, 
the federalist definition of allegiance that her lexicographers 
picked up on the battle-field after the "Rebellion" or "Insur- 
rection" was "put down" by federal armies, written in blood 
by a bayonet, which requires her citizens to give first allegiance 
to her creature, and, second, to her? Does not Massachusetts 
indorse and teach in her schools, colleges and universities John 
Fiske's degradation of herself to a rank not quite so low as a 
town or a city? 

This new brand of allegiance M'as unknown in Massachu- 
setts in 1812 when she notified President Madison that the first 
allegiance of her citizens was due to her. Are we to have a 
new New England dictionary every time we have a little "in- 
surrection" that lasts only four years? No! Massachusetts 
is not quite so degraded as she thinks she is, as John Fiske 
has pronounced her to be, as her Professors in her colleges 
and universities teach that she is. Let "hope elevate and joy 
brighten her crest." There are other teachers of world-wide 
repute, of authority to which royalty bows in submission, who 
differ with her teachers. There are hundreds of them, and 
on the questions of sovereignty and allegiance they are unani- 
mous. Massachusetts was for a few years, if not now, a sov- 
ereign, and every one of her citizens owed allegiance to her 
and to her alone. Has she destroyed her sovereignty? Has 
she lost the allegiance of her children? 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 263 

In a prior chapter the first of these questions was discussed 
in connection with State-rights. That view was restricted to 
the relation of the States to the federal government, and re- 
quired, of course, an examination of the Constitution. The 
question of sovereignty and its necessary and inseparable se- 
quence, allegiance, are not to be determined by the Constitu- 
tion. We must look to the only code of laws by which Nations 
are governed and to which every Nation must conform. The 
Law of Nations is a part of the law of the land and superior 
to the Constitution, says "Wharton. It is respectfully submit- 
ted just here that the error committed by all Northern states- 
men for thirty years before the war to free the negroes, was in 
looking no higher than the Constitution for the law that 
controlled the States in the Union. Their view was too narrow. 
They belittled the States by resorting to a convention of their 
own making as the law by which sovereigns are to be judged 
and controlled. Daniel "Webster was the Teucer Princeps in 
this offense. He knew better. He was not battling for Truth. 
He was a hired partisan. He not only dodged the issue pre- 
sented to him by Mr. Calhoun based on the Law of Nations, 
but he even evaded the body of the Constitution, and for his 
ground of battle he chose the preamble to the Constitution. 
And with the shout of victory and the cry of triumph over the 
South — the twenty-two States enlisted at once under "Web- 
ster's banner. Laws, civil and organic, were not binding. 
Fanaticism furnished the law — the rule of action. Men did 
not — would not reason. Seward found a "Higher Law — pro- 
claimed it — the mob adopted it — and it grew in favor until 
legislatures attempted to legalize it, and Judges quoted it to 
catch the favor of the mob. Of that "Higher Law" that was 
found in a higher latitude, but in a very low atmosphere, 
notice will be taken later on. The Law of Nations was ignored. 
As said before, the writer has not read a single reference by 
speakers or writers in the North, within sixty years, to the Laws 
of Nations, except two extracts given by Thad. Stevens, 
and his purpose was to justify his fiendish desire to desolate 
the South as a "conquered country." His purpose came up 
from the sovereign in Hell — his law came down from the 
Sovereign in Heaven. He stole "the livery of Heaven to serve 
the Devil in." 



264 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

What is sovereignty? It is the endowment of one man, as 
in a kingdom or monarchy, or an aggregation of men, as in a 
State or Republic, with all the rights, powers, privileges and 
immunities that every man in a state of nature is endowed 
with. These attributes of a man in a state of nature are taken 
by all publicists or authorities as the foundation of the Law 
of Nations. This sovereignty is immutable and indivisible. 
Vattel says: "Every sovereignty, properly so called, is, in its 
own nature, one and indivisible, since those who have united 
in society can not be separated in spite of themselves." 
(Edition of 1869, Page 27.) Again: "Since, therefore, the 
necessary law of nations consists in the application of the law 
of nature to States — which law is immutable, as being founded 
in the nature of things and particularly in the nature of man 
— it follows that the Necessary law of nations is immutable. 
Whence, as this law is immutable, and the obligations that 
arise from it are necessary and indispensable, nations can 
neither make any change in it by their conventions, dispense 
with it in their own conduct, nor reciprocally release each 
other from the observance of it." (Vattel, Page 58 of 
Preliminaries.) 

If this be not "Crowner's quest law" in Massachusetts, as 
she was indisputably a sovereign before she entered the Union, 
did she cease to be a sovereign after she entered? If sover- 
eignty be immutable and indivisible, unless she surrendered — 
donated — her sovereignty in toto, in solido, did she not retain 
it in its entirety ? Will her federalism drive her to the extrem- 
ity of denying an undisputed law of Nations, and to maintain 
that she had a Higher Law for her government, and that she 
retained a fraction of her sovereignty and made an irrevocable 
gift, or grant, of the remaining fraction to the federal govern- 
ment? As she acknowledges that she is less than a sovereign 
and teaches that she is but a little bigger than a town or city, 
it will be of interest, if not of value, to institute a search, or 
raise an "Investigating Committee" to find out who or what 
owns the fraction of sovereignty she granted away forever 
when she by ordinance agreed to the Constitution and entered 
the Union. For, be it remembered, that a grant in fee is ir- 
revocable — except, perhaps, it be given under and by the 
"Higher Law." Who holds and owns in fee that fraction, or 



TR UE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 265 

the whole, of Massachusetts' sovereignty? In order to deter- 
mine this question, it is necessary not only to find the grantee 
but to decide its legal capacity to take and to hold indef easibly 
such a grant. To do this we must analyze the federal govern- 
ment. This has been done in the chapter on State Rights, but 
a brief repetition here is advisable. 

In limine, it must be stated that sovereignty is not predi- 
cable of any one or thing except a sovereign. Therefore, the 
sovereignty, fractional or total, that Massachusetts donated is 
not in the Constitution. A paper — a writing — a contract — a 
compact, cannot be a grantee — much less, if possible, can it 
hold, exercise and enforce sovereign powers. But Massachu- 
setts may have granted her sovereignty to the federal govern- 
ment. A thing can not receive a grant, although some of our 
Northern millionaires, by will, do bequeath their estates to 
cats. Still, in the case of the cats, the bequest must have a 
trustee who takes the bequest and holds it for the feline 
beneficiaries. 

Again, even if a thing could take a grant it must be in esse 
and not in future. Grants cannot hang around like Mahomet's 
coffin. When the Constitution was adopted, two years elapsed 
before the federal government came into existence. Where 
was the sovereignty Massachusetts donated, during those 
years ? It was not in the paper on which the Constitution was 
written. If the government had not organized within twenty 
or more years, where would have been the sovereignty of the 
States during that period ? When the government was erected, 
according to the specifications the architects gave in the Con- 
stitution, did the sovereignty Massachusetts granted by agree- 
ing to the Constitution, and which had been held somewhere 
in abeyance or in escrow, vest in the government? Sovereignty 
is not only immutable and indivisible, but it is ** inalienable ". 
(Vattel.) 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 
SOVEREIGNTY AND ALLEGIANCE- 
CONTINUED. 

Sovereignty and allegiance are correlative. They are the 
perfect illustration of reciprocity. They are cause and effect. 
It is impossible for one to exist without the other. They are 
inseparable. "When men come together and form an independ- 
ent society they constitute a nation called a sovereignty. They 
may form a government of any type they prefer. They may 
rule themselves as a pure democracy, or select a limited num- 
ber, or choose one man, as their ruler. In the first case — a 
democracy — the sovereignty abides in the entire people who 
compose the society; in the second, it is in the select few; in 
the third, it is in the one man, as -a king, or emperor. The 
instant the power of the people is conferred there exist 
sovereignty and allegiance. The sovereign is bound to protect 
the life, liberty and property of each subject, or citizen, and 
each subject or citizen is bound to his sovereign to the extent 
of sacrificing property and even life in support of his sover- 
eign. If the State, or nation, be attacked by a public enemy, 
as the sovereign must protect and defend his State, nation, or 
kingdom, and as he thereby protects and defends his subjects, 
or the citizens, they are in duty bound to give their time, means 
and lives, if necessary, to aid their sovereign. As sovereignty 
is indivisible, so is allegiance. As sovereignty is inalienable, so 
is allegiance. By this it is not intended to assert that a subject 
or citizen, by leaving his country and becoming naturalized, 
can not change his allegiance. But until he shall do that his 
allegiance is inviolable. Says Vattel: "The citizen or the 
subject of a State who absents himself for a time without the 
intention to abandon the society of which he is a member, does 
not lose his privilege by his absence ; he preserves his rights and 
remains bound by the same obligations." 

From the foregoing laws of Nations it inevitably follows 
that a subject, or a citizen, cannot owe allegiance to two 
sovereigns at the same time. As two half-sovereignties are 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 267 

impossible, so two half-allegianees are not known to the law. 
As allegiance can not be divided between two sovereigns, there- 
fore it is impossible for a subject or citizen to owe a greater 
part of allegiance to one sovereign, and the lesser, or remaining 
fraction of allegiance to another sovereign. 

Those truisms lead us directly to their application to our 
American dual — or State and federal — governments. If there 
had been no separate societies called States in 1787, and the 
people en masse had chosen delegates and had sent them to 
Philadelphia to frame a Constitution, and the same people, by 
a majority vote, had adopted the Constitution, there would 
have been, after the governn^ent had been organized^ one sov- 
ereign government, and every citizen within the boundaries of 
that government would have owed — not to the government — 
but to the entire people allegiance, one and indivisible. That 
government — that is, the people acting through that govern- 
ment — could then have organized certain districts of the entire 
territory into States, or provinces, or arrondissements as the 
French did, and have conferred on each, at discretion, the right 
to exercise all governmental authority named in the Act for 
their organization. This arrangement would have been exactly 
similar to what each separate State has done in organizing 
counties. In that supposed action we would have had one 
sovereign and one allegiance, and the construction of the dual 
forms of government would now be what Nathan Dane, in his 
flight of fancy, imagined they are. 

But the order in time — the primogeniture — of the two gov- 
ernments was exactly the reverse of the case supposed in the 
above and last paragraph. The thirteen States came into life 
six years before the federal government appeared. These 
States were the parent and the federal government is their 
child. The man who denies this order of the beginning of the 
dual government disputes history as well authenticated as any 
in the annals of time. As each State was sovereign, free and 
independent before the Constitution was adopted, to whom did 
the citizens of each State owe allegiance? Did the citizens of 
Massachusetts owe allegiance to New York, or those of New 
York to Virginia, or of Georgia to Massachusetts? The ques- 
tion carries its answer. As well might we ask to whom does 
an Englishman, or a German, or a Russian owes allegiance, 

\ 



268 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

The main question now arises — to whom or to what did the 
citizens of the nine States owe allegiance after they adopted 
the Constitution? Allegiance cannot be given to a paper — to 
a contract, or a compact. Allegiance is due only to a man, or 
men, to a ruler — a protector — a defender — of the subject or 
citizen. There can be no reciprocity unless there be protection 
in consideration for obedience. The Constitution could not 
protect, therefore there was no allegiance. This condition 
continued for two years. Then the federal government came 
into existence. Did its birth change the status of allegiance? 
The Nationalists assume without argument that it did. This 
is the difference between democracy and imperialism — ^between 
liberty and despotism — between State Rights and consolidated 
Nationalism. This is the question that determines the difference 
between the right of a State or States to secede from the Union 
and the right of the States remaining in the Union to follow 
them with hostile armies to force them back in the Union. 
The difference between the right to secede and the right to 
drive back into the Union by war — the difference between lib- 
erty and despotism — was illustrated in the conduct of two fed- 
eral administrations, one succeeding the other; one that of 
James Buchanan, a Democrat and Statesman, safe and sane; 
the other that of his successor, Abraham Lincoln, — an Aboli- 
tionist, a Republican, an infidel, a pagan, "inordinately," 
"intensely," " overweeningly, " ambitious; and the subject of 
melancholia so deep and persistent that his friends had to 
guard him to prevent suicide — an administration that furnished 
a bloody spectacle that shocked the friends of freedom 
throughout the civilized world. The Attorney General and 
legal adviser of one administration (Buchanan's) was Judge 
Jeremiah S. Black of Pennsylvania, her greatest lawyer, orator, 
statesman and controversialist, who advised the President in a 
well prepared written opinion that he had no right or power to 
make war on any State in or out of the Union ; and the Attor- 
ney General and legal adviser of the next administration (Lin- 
coln's) was James M. Speed of Kentucky, who had held Lincoln 
in his dwelling in Kentucky during eight months under guard, 
and who says he had to remove from Lincoln's reach, razors, 
knives and all dangerous weapons or tools to save him from 
suicide. Now to the main question: 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 269 

It must be borne in mind that the question of allegiance to 
be now considered relates to the citizen of a State and not to 
a State or States. States owe no allegiance to any one, or to any 
Power. Every citizen and every subject owes allegiance to 
some person, or to a sovereign power. A citizen can commit 
treason; a State cannot. A citizen can expatriate himself; a 
State cannot. A citizen can be prosecuted and hanged ; a State 
cannot. A State can not be sued in civil courts; neither can a 
sovereign. This question was elaborately discussed by every 
Judge of the U. S. Supreme Court in the celebrated case of 
Alexander Chisholm vs. The State of Georgia, which case 
brought about the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution, 
forbidding suit against a State. So that, the question just here 
and now, is, what change, if any, did the organization of the 
federal government make in the allegiance of a citizen of any 
State ? The writer has hitherto said that his aim is to make the 
discussion of State Rights, State Sovereignty and cognate ques- 
tions so plain that men who are not lawyers can understand 
them. Hence, he, again, must bring forward and briefly re-state 
some facts and law already presented. The right of secession, 
as before stated, is not to be settled by the Constitution. The 
Law of Nations determines that question. And the law of al- 
legiance is found in the same Code — unless there be something 
in the Constitution that affects the status of the citizen. This 
possible distinction is based on the difference between the rights 
of a State and of a citizen of that State — some points of this 
difference being given in this paragraph. 

Allegiance is due to that Supreme Power that protects life, 
liberty, property. Is this power for protection entrusted to the 
State, or to the federal government? It belonged to the States 
before they formed the federal government. Did they "grant" 
that power — throw off that obligation — when they adopted the 
Constitution? When a citizen of Massachusetts is assaulted and 
beaten, or robbed, or an attempt is made on his life, to which 
of the two governments does he appeal for redress? Which 
one prosecutes the criminal and defrays the expenses ? Should 
a citizen of Massachusetts have to sue to recover money or 
land or any other species of property withheld by another citi- 
zen, to what court does he resort — State or Federal? In all 



270 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

these eases the injured party must appeal to the State. The 
federal government is impotent. Which of the two owns the 
right of eminent domain — an attribute of sovereignty? The 
State. The federal government cannot enter a State and take 
possession of land for a fort, or a lighthouse, or an arsenal, or 
a mint, without the assent of the State expressed through her 
legislature. It cannot get possession of private property of any 
citizen in a State without paying full value. Its judiciary can- 
not try a case requiring a jury without the aid of citizens of 
the State in which the case must be tried. In fact, and finally, 
(as previously shown in the chapter on State Rights) the fed- 
eral government cannot exist without the voluntary action of 
a majority of the States. Destroy the federal government and 
the autonomy of States would not be affected in the slightest 
degree. Their citizens would be inconvenienced in many ways, 
but the sovereignty of each State would be perfect. But no 
inconvenience can possibly be considered in deciding this 
question. 

The purpose of the States in creating a federal government 
was exclusively for their own benefit and convenience. That 
government derives no benefits by its existence. Its machinery, 
its operations, its powers, were intended to be for the good of 
the citizens of the States. It has no separate citizenry to serve, 
or to tax, or to punish, or to make war. Its right to adjudge, 
to use the writ of habeas corpus, to make and enforce laws, was 
delegated that it might be of service to the citizens of the States. 
No intelligent man can dispute or even doubt these proposi- 
tions. Can allegiance to such an agency be predicated? Is it 
due to the President? He has, in his own right, not one attri- 
bute of a sovereign. Does the delegated power to make laws, 
confer any sovereignty on Congress ? Is the limited jurisdiction 
of the federal judiciary one of the attributes of sovereignty? 
The States said, when they created these three functionaries: 
"You can exercise the limited powers hereby entrusted to you 
BO long as we consent, or until three-fourths of us decide to take 
one or more from you." Is allegiance due to the supreme au- 
thority of a society, or to a creature formed by that supreme 
authority, which can change, or diminish, or destroy its own 
handiwork ? 



CHAPTER XXXVn. 

CITIZENSHIP. 

We come now to consider citizenship. The words "citizens 
of the United States" and "citizens of a State" are used several 
times in the Constitution. From this it is contended that there 
are two separate and distinct citizenships in this country. From 
the latter view has arisen the political heresy that a citizen of 
the United States owes prior allegiance to the United States, 
and a secondary and subordinate allegiance to his State. On 
this theory was based the charge that every citizen who adhered 
to his State during the War Between the States or, as the 
Nationalists view it, between the federal government (a Nation 
say they) and the Southern States, was a Rebel and a Traitor. 
We can get light on this supposed dual and superior and infe- 
rior status of a citizen by devoting a few moments to the raison 
d'etre of the Union, the motive that impelled the States to form 
a Union. The thirteen States, each sovereign and with all the 
duties and obligations thereby imposed, and each standing 
alone, weak and open to destruction or absorption by any for- 
eign Power, concluded it would be to the interest of each to 
unite their strength. Another reason was the inevitable squab- 
bles and conflicts that must occur between thirteen little nations 
huddled together — the strong, through ambition, or lust for 
power and gain, attacking and conquering the weak. Hence 
they agreed to have a common representative to deal with for- 
eign nations and to insure domestic tranquility. 

The first of these two purposes made it necessary to provide 
for immigration and to give American protection to all immi- 
grants who should desire to become citizens. Hence, the power 
to naturalize foreigners, instead of being exercised by each 
State for itself, was conferred on one of their triple representa- 
tives — the Congress. So that when the first immigrant was 
naturalized under a law of Congress, he became an American 
citizen, and, as such, was entitled to such protection of life, 
liberty and property as the federal government, under its lim- 
ited authority, could extend to him. But that naturalization 



272 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

did not make him a citizen of any State; nor was it possible 
for him to be a citizen of the United States, or States United, 
as that would make him a citizen of thirteen States. And, yet, 
he occupied the position of a citizen by and through naturaliza- 
tion. That is, he could claim the protection of the federal gov- 
ernment so far as it was vested with authority, without being 
a citizen of any State. After naturalization he could go to 
Canada or Mexico to engage in business, and that protection 
would attend him. If he should enlist in the army or navy and 
be captured by his former sovereign, he would be entitled to 
the treatment accorded to prisoners of war under the laws of 
Nations. If he should desire to return to his native land, he 
would be entitled to a passport issued by the Secreary of State 
designating him * * an American citizen. ' ' So that, in one sense, 
there are two citizenships in the territory called the United 
States — one a floating, federal citizenship, the other attached 
to that sovereign body, the people and citizens of a State. 

We return now to the Constitution to learn what its authors 
meant by the words, "citizen of the United States." In Art. 
I, Sec. II, we find their meaning. **No person shall be a Rep- 
resentative (in Congress) who shall not have attained the age 
of twenty-five years and been seven years a citizen of the United 
States." The meaning of "United States" is a matter of arith- 
metic. The States had not been united under the Constitution 
two years before the first Representatives were sworn and took 
their seats in Congress. Thus it was mathematically impossible 
for a Representative to be "a citizen of the United States" for 
seven years before the first Congress. But he could have been 
a citizen of a State longer than seven years in the opinion of 
the framers of the Constitution, who had declared each of the 
colonies a "free, independent and sovereign State" in the Art- 
icles of Confederation formed in 1777 — twelve years before the 
first Congress. From this review of the word citizen and its 
connections in the Constitution, it appears that before the 
Fourteenth Amendment made after the war between the North- 
em States and the Confederate States, there were no citizens 
except those of the several States, and the few naturalized citi- 
zens before they selected a State to become citizens of it. This 
condition of citizenship was admitted by the Abolition fanatics 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SO UTH 273 

and they, therefore, drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to 
create a dual citizenship in these words: **A11 persons born, 
or naturalized, in the United States and subject to the jurisdic- 
tion thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State 
wherein they reside. ' ' 



CHAPTER XXXVm. 

MORE AS TO SOVEREIGNTY— THE MOST 

SIGNIFICANT AMENDMENT. 

The first amendments (ten in number) were made to protect 
citizens of the States from oppression by the federal govern- 
ment. I have already quoted and given the number of the 
inhibitions laid on the government by the States in those 
amendments. Article XI is the most significant of all, and, in 
this discussion of sovereignty of each State after the Constitu- 
tion was adopted, requires special notice. It is this: 

"The Judicial power of the United States shall not be con- 
strued to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or 
prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of an- 
other State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State." 
(The capital letters are given as in the amendment.) 

This amendment was adopted to repeal a power given in 
the original, in 1787, to the Judicial Department of the federal 
government in and by Article 3, Section 2, in these words: 
**The Judicial Power shall extend to all cases, in Law and 
Equity * * * * between a State and Citizen of another State 
* * * * and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign 
States, Citizens or Subjects." 

The difference between the original power and the amend- 
ment is infinite: that is to say, it is the difference between 
something and nothing. By the original grant of power to the 
Judiciary, a State could be sued by citizens of another State, 
and by citizens or subjects of any foreign State. Why was this 
amendment made ? It was because no sovereign can be sued in 
law or equity without his express assent. This exemption is 
one of the immutable rights that pertain to and is a part of 
sovereignty. After consideration, between the adoption of the 
Constitution and the meeting of the first Congress, the States 
saw that, by that delegation of power to the federal Judiciary, 
they had surrendered a most important sovereign privilege or 
exemption, and as soon as they could act, they resumed it. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 275 

Amendments I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, are to protect 
individuals from oppression by the federal government. Arti- 
cles IX, X, XI, are a declaration of State-rights or of sover- 
eignty, and XII regulates the election of President and Vice- 
President. 

If it be true, as contended by the Nationalists, that "the 
people" made the Constitution, and that every power spoken 
of therein was granted in perpetuity to the government, and 
as one of those powers granted to the Congress was — "to make 
all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into 
execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested 
by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or 
in any Department or Officer thereof;" and, as the Congress 
was made the judge of what laws are "necessary and proper," 
does it not follow, logically and legally, that the Congress 
under that unrestrained discretion had the indefeasible power 
to regulate criminal procedure in the federal courts for trial of 
all grades of crime: to say how and where troops could be 
quartered; to say whether the people might keep and bear 
arms; to say what amount of bail should be required; what 
fines should be imposed ; what punishment should be inflicted ; 
to say what should be freedom of the press and of speech ? Do 
not all these ppwers belong, by the Law of Nations, to sover- 
eigns? If so — and who can deny it? — was not the Congress, by 
that grant of power to make all laws it might decide to be nec- 
essary and proper, vested with one of the rights and privileges 
of a sovereign? And as a sovereign power is "immutable," 
"inalienable" and perpetual, how did it come about that "the 
people" who had given that power, could, within two years, 
say — ^not to the Congress alone, but to that "sovereign Federal 
Government :" "You shall not do any one of the acts named in 
eight of these amendments made by us?" But the National- 
ists and Imperialists may answer that "power to legislate on 
the subjects specified in those eight amendments is not named 
in terms among the many powers expressly granted in Article 
1, Section VIII. They were overlooked by "the people" when 
they wrote the Constitution, and not being specifically granted 
"the people" did not withdraw, or deprive the Congress of, 
a granted "sovereign power." Nor did "the people" expressly 



376 TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 

give the Congress power to take their money, and make a gift 
of eight hundred thousand dollars to the subjects of Italy and 
Sicily, but a Congress of Nationalists said they could lawfully 
do it and they did it. Nor did "the people" grant power to the 
Congress to make a gift of their money to President Taft to 
spend in touring the country to get himself re-elected, to keep 
the Nationalists' hands in the treasury. If this Congress of 
Nationalists had lawful power to give away $25,000 to Taft, 
could they not lawfully give him $250,000 or $500,000? 

The answer by the Nationalists is not supported by law in 
or outside the Constitution. The gifts to the people of Italy and 
Sicily, and to Taft, if not midday robbery of **the people," 
were not made by right of any power given to the Congress. 
They gave away the people's money on the assumption by 
Nationalists that the Federal Government, as soon as organized 
in 1787, became instanter a sovereign over and in control of 
the States, and, as a sovereign, has the right to give away "the 
people's" money to any one the Congress may decide to favor, 
or to enrich. It is not surprising that a Congress of National- 
ists, in order to hold despotic rule, should believe they have the 
right to do as they please with "the people's" money, but it 
shocks the conscience of all men, not Nationalists, that a lawyer 
and a Judge should take money thus filched from ' ' the people. ' * 
But even if the answer of the Nationalists that there had been 
no express immutable and perpetual grant to Congress over 
the many governmental regulations named in the eight amend- 
ments, and that, therefore, no inhibition was placed on the 
sovereign Federal Government until those amendments were 
adopted, that answer is of no avail to the eleventh amendment 
relating to suits against a State. That amendment raised and 
settled for such time as the Constitution shall be respected as 
law, the question of State-Rights, State sovereignty, and of 
sovereign power claimed for the Federal Government by 
Nationalists. A statement of the facts of the record is all the 
demonstration that argument of any length could establish. 

"The States" — Mr. Webster's sovereign "people" — de- 
clared in and by the Constitution in 1787 that "the judicial 
Power of the United States shall extend to all cases in law and 
equity between a State and Citizens of another State, and be- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 277 

tween a State, or the Citizens thereof and foreign States, 
Citizens, or Subjects." In 1798, the same States — Webster's 
sovereign "people" — made another solemn declaration that the 
judicial power of the United States "shall not be construed to 
extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted 
against one of the United States by citizens of another State, or 
by citizens or subjects of any Foreign State." 

Is argument needed to f-ouvince even Nationalists that the 
amendment of 1798 repealed that part of paragraph I, Section 
II, Article III of the Constitution, just quoted, that was adopted 
eleven years before this amendment was made ? The Nationalists, 
though wild, and damners of the Constitution as "a covenant 
with Death and an agreement with Hell, ' ' are not idiots. 

But what does this amendment establish? It proves, as 
clear as reason can establish any proposition, that Mr. Web- 
ster's "the people" did not grant to the Federal Government, 
or to the United States, any power that "the people" cannot 
take away at will, for the power to resume one grant necessarily 
can take away another grant. If the Federal Government, or 
its Judiciary, hold that jurisdiction is a sovereign and immut- 
able right, why did it, without a struggle or protest — yes, 
dumbly — permit the States to wrest that sovereign right from 
it? The reasons have already been stated in the chapter on 
State Rights. It was because "the people," as a single aggre- 
gation, did not and never did exist. It was because the people, 
as a body, had no voice in making the Constitution. It was be- 
cause the people in each State, holding in themselves the sov- 
ereignty of the State, made the Constitution. It was because 
the States acting together made a Constitution and erected on 
it a government which they through their own citizens were to 
conduct, regulate, and have entire control of. It was because 
the powers committed to the federal government were to be 
exercised by certain of their own citizens to be selected and 
appointed at stated periods by the States themselves. No re- 
sistance was made to the withdrawal of that Judicial authority, 
because there was no separate people, or sovereign, in existence 
to raise a hand or voice. The only people, or sovereign, or 
thing that could object, or could speak, was the States, who 
decided to undo what they had done. The Congress, the ser- 



278 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

vants of the people, acted with the people to destroy the judicial 
power. The so-called sovereign Judiciary was the creature of 
the sovereign people, who withdrew its rights to have jurisdic- 
tion over a State. We reach the reductio ad absurdum of the 
Nationalists' contention when we run against the inevitable 
proposition that "the people," or the States, when they at- 
tempted to grant inalienable and perpetual powers to the 
federal Government or the United States, as contended, were 
attempting to grant that power to themselves. 

Again, it was because there was no grant made by States 
of any power. They appointed one agent to act for all the 
States. The States so said in terms in Article X of the twelve 
amendments. The States or people of each State, speaking with 
unanimity, declared: "The powers not delegated to the 
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the 
States, are reserved *to the States respectively, or to the people.", 

"The powers not delegated." Powers are delegated to a 
delegate. Who and what is a delegate ? Noah Webster defines 
a delegate to be "one appointed and sent by another with 
powers to transact business as his representative; a deputy; 
sjmonyms — deputy, representative, commissioner, vicar, attor- 
ney, substitute." Under the verb "delegate," he says: "To 
depute; appropriately, to send on an embassy; to send with 
power to transact business, as a representative. 

"2: To intrust, to commit, to deliver to another's care 
and management ; to delegate authority to an envoy, represent- 
ative, or judge." 

He defines an agent to be (head 3) "a substitute; a deputy, 
one intrusted with the business of another; one who acts for 
another, as his representative." 

The States declared — "The powers not delegated, intrusted 
and committee^ to the United States by the Constitution — " 

The word "delegated" is the voice of an interpreter. It 
interprets the entire writing called the Constitution, "The 
powers," include all powers — each and every power "not dele- 
gated." It is not speaking of the Present, but of the Past. 
The States, clothed vnth absolute sovereignty, declare: "The 
powers which we delegated, two years ago, in and by our joint 
contract, compact, or agreement, by which we created an agent 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 279 

to transact certain of our business, are specifically set forth in 
that writing." This is the voice of the States giving their 
construction of what they intended to do and did when they 
agreed to do, through a common agent, certain business for 
their "mutual protection and advantage." They put no time 
limit on the agency — that is, as to the length of time the agency, 
or machinery through which their business was to be done, 
should continue, but they agreed to dismiss their agents (rep- 
resentatives) every two years; their agent, (the President) 
every four years; and their Senators every two, four and six 
years. Their other agents, the Judges, could continue "during 
good behavior." 

For the construction of a written instrument, there cannot 
be any evidence of its meaning so high or authoritative as the 
unanimous testimony of those who made it. Every court in 
Christendom has declared that evidence to be conclusive. The 
States unanimously declared that they had only "delegated" 
to the Congress, the President and the Judiciary, the exercise 
of a few of their powers ; and had expressly reserved the exer- 
cise of all other powers. The power of a sovereign to dismiss 
an agent and to terminate the agency was never questioned, or 
doubted, until Mr. Webster, in the brief of a hired lawyer, con- 
tended in 1833 that the agent could compel its principal, its 
master, its creator, to obey a law which its creator adjudged 
to be contrary to instructions which the principal had given 
in unmistakable language. A hypothetical situation, or condi- 
tion of State affairs, will show the unsoundness of Webster's 
bought opinion. It is this: Suppose that all the States had 
nullified the tariff Act and refused to let it be executed within 
their borders. Would the legal aspect of the situation be 
changed from what it was when one State — South Carolina — 
nullified? If so, it is for Nationalists to show the difference. 
South Carolina asserted a State right — the right of a sovereign, 
and the undoubted right of a principal, on the assumption that 
the federal government was and is the agent of the States 
"without an interest coupled" with the agency. If all the 
States — if half the States, each acting separately, can nullify, 
why has not one State the same power or right? If all the 
States had nullified that tariff Act, would it have been the duty 



280 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

of the United States, through the government at Washingon, 
to enforce the law to collect the custom duties? If one were 
lawless, would not two nullifiers be lawless? Would not half? 
Would not all? The Nationalists' reply is that "a State cannot 
nullify," (which is begging the question) "cannot commit 
treason; the people, the individuals who resist would be the 
traitors. President Jackson did not say he would hang South 
Carolina. He said *I will hang Calhoun.' " 

In the case supposed — of nullification by all the States — 
whom would Jackson have hanged? The people of all the 
States — all the people of all the States who defied the tariff 
law ? Could the agent hang his principal because he refused to 
ratify an act done by the agent which the principal asserted 
exceeded the authority he gave to the agent? But that is not 
the chief fault in the contention by Nationalists. They must 
show how the sovereign United States can enforce obedience to 
the law. Where could the President get an army? The States, 
says the compact, supply all soldiers. The president has to 
request the Governor of each State to lend him men called sol- 
diers. The Governor alone has the right to call on citizens of 
his State to enlist. He alone can appoint Colonels, Captains, 
Lieutenants. The Governors of the New England States re- 
fused to furnish troops to President Madison in 1812, and the 
•'Sovereign United States" had to submit to John Fiske's little 
dependencies (the States) that are not quite so much "media- 
tized" as cities and counties, and that gave away, like spend- 
thrifts, to their creature in 1787, the most, the best, the highest 
attributes of sovereignty each held; yes, stripped themselves 
of the powers necessary to self-preservation — that, by the high- 
est law on earth, "The Laws of Nations," are "immutable," 
"indivisible," and "inalienable;" the power to make war, to 
coin money, to levy taxes, to make treaties, to own a warship 
— and are now little Persian satrapies, Roman provinces, arron- 
dissements, or cantons; "little stars revolving around and ex- 
isting by the light and heat of the Central Sun at Washington" 
— all under the control of the sovereign Nation — the World 
Power — the Empire — whose throne is in the White House ! 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

"We are the creatures of circumstance and passion." The 
truth of that axiom was never better exemplified than in the 
career of Abraham Lincoln. On the current of Time, when 
unruffled by gales of passion ; when the roar of battle has died 
away and the rumbling of commerce has followed; when the 
door to the temple of Janus has been closed long enough to 
creak on its rusty hinges, millions of men have come, played 
their parts on the stage of life, and passed, leaving nothing but 
a brief and loving epitaph, who were superior in every par- 
ticular, mental, moral and physical, to the subject of this notice. 
Had the Commune not taken control of Paris ; had the red cap, 
that portent of blood, not been the patriots' insignia of power; 
had not the Menads, fierce and furious with hunger, kindled 
fire in the hearts of the sans-culottes, — the incomparable Cor- 
sican would, no doubt, like Desartes and Leverrier, have filled 
the chair of Mathematics in a college, and might have discov- 
ered the planet Neptune. 

Had not Harriet Beecher Stowe given birth to that fox and 
tied fire to its tail, and turned it loose in the Northern prairies ; 
had not a madman attempted to incite negro insurrection in 
Virginia; had not the Democrats in convention failed to make 
a nomination in 1860, the fame of Abraham Lncoln would have 
drooped at the confines of Illinois, and the savor of his name 
would have lingered and perished in the western haunts con- 
genial to vulgar and obscene anecdotes and stories. But cir- 
cumstances and fanaticism took him as he was, and raised him 
to the pinnacle his vaulting ambition coveted, and whence the 
bullet of a madman apotheosized him. The dead Lincoln has 
aroused enthusiasm to the degree of a craze. The bibliography 
of Lincoln written during forty years is quadruple that on 
Washington during 113 years. In fact, Booker, the negro, is a 
close second in popular favor, in the Northern States, to George 
Washington. Andrew Carnegie, as reported by the press, 
after a careful analysis of the white and the black Washington, 



282 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

gave it as his deliberate opinion that the negro is a few laps 
ahead. This was said just after a few words from Booker had 
so amazed the ignorant Scot, that he jerked out $650,000 and 
donated them to his wonder. Booker — more amazed by such 
waste of money, thinking he might be required to build and 
keep up an Infirmary for Fools, and probably have to take care 
of this spendthrift in his old age — after getting his breath, 
asked what the cheek was for. "For you, or your school, just 
as you wish." 

It seems that the glory of the Founder of the Republic of 
American States was eclipsed when Lincoln by war destroyed 
it, and raised the federal government — the creature of the 
States — to the rank of a sovereign Nation over and controlling 
the States. This was his opinion expressed in his Inaugural 
of March 4th, 1861, and that opinion was his justification for 
making war on the seceded States before getting authority 
from Congress — ^the only tribunal that can declare war, and 
that only against a foreign nation. But I must not discuss the 
law at this moment. These worshipers of Lincoln dead, turned 
their backs to him until his tragic taking-off. "When he was 
nominated for the Presidency in 1861, the Northern press was 
cachinatory over the absurdity of such a hoosier at the helm 
of State even in a calm; what could he do in a storm? The 
walks of private life, the highways of commerce, hummed and 
echoed with "rail-splitter" — "gawk" — "Hoosier" — "a walk- 
ing cyclopedia of dirty stories" — "an ignoramus" — all true 
except the last. When Lincoln opened the ball with 17,000 sol- 
diers at Bull Run — fanatics at the head of whose frantic column 
he stood like Lucifer "proudly eminent" — and marched over 
the Constitution into Virginia, the hilarity was hushed, the 
comedy, through ambition, had in a twinkling become the trag- 
edy, not for one to be stabbed, but in which nations had been 
killed. When that Sabbath sun — that had looked on the thou- 
sands of livid faces turned to him as if praying for life — went 
down, and the thousands had been scattered as chaff; when the 
women, arrayed as lilies never are, with their Beaux Brummell 
as butlers to pour the champag:';) and serve the luncheon, drove 
out from Washington that holiday to rejoice at the butchery 
of their betters, and to wave their satins and silks, as the Rebels 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 283 

were captured and marched to the tune of traitors and rogues, 
and the race began between infantry, carriages with guns, and 
carriages with Brummells and disheveled women — too pale to 
weep — to reach "Washington, the curses then poured molten on 
Lincoln and his fanatical mob were such as no American, except 
Benedict Arnold, had ever evoked. 

That was but the opening fusillade. From that day to the 
middle of 1864, a cannonade of abuse saluted him. **A fool," 
"an ass," "an idiot," "imbecile," "constantly swapping Gen- 
erals," not regarding his old saw — "not to swap horses while 
crossing the branch," "not fit to govern a cage of cubs," "why 
run down deserters — he '11 turn 'em loose. ' ' Thousands wished 
to get rid of him, but the only road to send him away was 
through the ballot box. He was vilified throughout the Union. 
Strangers, judging by the language, and not knowing of whom 
it was spoken, would have believed a villain, a pirate, a cracks- 
man of a hundred banks, or an idiot was the offender. These 
anathemas were thundered through the Northern press for near 
three years. When it became evident that the Confederate 
States, from exhaustion, could not maintain much longer the 
principle of sovereignty of the States they had advocated in 
the Union for seventy years, and had endeavored to uphold out 
of the Union, the abuse of Lincoln became less violent, and 
finally simmered down when General Lee surrendered. Then, 
the negroes being freed, as the fanatics believed, by Lincoln's 
bull called the Emancipation proclamation ; and The Nation, as 
they styled it, being saved, abuse and vilification changed to 
commendation, then to praise, until, rising on the unsubstantial 
fabric of enthusiasm, his late traducers discovered Lincoln to 
be a hero. So he stood until his unfortunate end at the hands 
of a madman. Then, with clamor and shout for revenge and 
blood, came the erstwhile calumniators laden with wreaths of 
laurel and bay, songsters reciting poems, orators crammed with 
historic examples of heroes, great warriors, statesmen and 
saints, to find a parallel to the man who had "saved the Nation 
and freed the negroes." 

"When a man persistently abuses a neighbor for years and, 
on receipt of a benefaction believed to come from the hands of 
that neighbor, suddenly changes from abuse to unbounded 



284 TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 

praise, and then to hero-worsliip, who shall say whether the 
abuse or the praise is based on truth ? When a large aggrega- 
tion of men pour vials of wrath on one in authority over them 
for years, and they suddenly receive an invaluable property 
made by the operatives in the corporation of which their 
quondam villain is president, and, from vile slander, the recip- 
ients of the property shout his praises on bended knees, who 
can decide whether the abuse or the praise was deserved ? Cer- 
tainly both cannot be true. The supposed invaluable property 
was the "Nation saved," and the imagined Savior was Abra- 
ham Lincoln, A greater deception no people ever practised on 
themselves. No more delusive dream ever possessed the brain 
of an enthusiast. Lincoln the Savior of the * * Nation ? ' ' Lincoln 
a great General? Lincoln another Washington, another Marl- 
borough, another Wellington, another Lee? He was a wonder- 
ful cyclopedia of anecdotes and homespun stories — the major- 
ity shockingly obscene, but to say he was in any sense a warrior 
is the cruel flattery of a sycophant. One of the substantial 
grounds of abuse throughout the North was his ignorance of 
the art of war. He has been lauded as an almost infallible 
judge of men — that, too, in the face of his continual blunders 
in choosing men to command armies. Did he exemplify his 
marvelous judgment when he removed General after General 
over the army in Virginia ? If so, what shall be said of McClel- 
lan, of Pope, with ** Headquarters in the saddle;" of Halleck, 
and Burnside, and Meade, and, also, of Banks, the * * Confeder- 
ates ' Commissary" in Louisiana? 

Born in the lowlands, Lincoln was early infected by their 
mephitic exhalations which became pestilent to companionship 
in every walk and station. No change of position, no height of 
official elevation, could ameliorate it. The polish usually given 
by contact with refinement, the respect due from youth to age ; 
the reverence that all, young and old, pay to those who try to 
lead the world to Heaven, produced no more effect on his natal 
and social proclivity than do rain-drops on the armadillo. As 
the lower insect and crawling world are by instinct drawn to 
and feed on putrid things, his associates gathered to and clung 
to him, attracted by the foul drippings from his tongue. The 
atmosphere of the West, before Lincoln was known beyond the 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 285 

borders of Illinois, was saturated and reeked with his stories so 
delightful to the vulgar and salacious appetite. I have said this 
infection continued from youth through life. One instance is 
sufficient proof of this assertion. During the war, some young 
men of Baltimore, who as Christians had become sickened by 
its brutality, held a meeting at which the Rev. Mr. Fuller, pas- 
tor of the Presbyterian Church, Eutaw Place, was present to 
take counsel to decide if they could do anything to diminish 
the horrors of the war. They decided to send a committee with 
the Rev. Mr. Fuller at the head, to see President Lincoln. They 
went — called at the White House, and the chairman spoke in 
behalf of those Christians. Lincoln heard him in silence. "When 
Mr. Fuller concluded, Lincoln without comment or reply, said 
the * 



CHAPTER XL. 

LINCOLN VIEWED IN DIFFERENT 

ASPECTS. 

The annals of all history show no prototype or counterpart 
of Abraham Lincoln. In every aspect he was sui generis. There 
have been men of even greater monstrosity in one particular; 
but, in his triune assembly — physical, mental and moral — he 
stands alone. In every physical attribute he was abnormal. 
He was six feet four inches in height; his arms were long like 
those of the gorilla; his hands very long with uncommon pre- 
hensile capacity ; his legs out of proportion in length ; his trunk 
short ; his chest very narrow between the shoulders, and from 
front to rear sunken as with consumption. His face had not a 
normal feature; his nose stood away to the right like the im- 
mortal nose of Jack White ; his ears were very large and set at 
right angles to his skull; his mouth was misshapen; his fore- 
head retreating; his eyes small and chin projecting; his feet 
large and he was stoop-shouldered — ^hia voice was piping, and 
his gait ambling, shambling and rambling. 

His moral side was worse than his physical. He was amiable 
with men, but cruel and perfidious to women. To creditors he 
was true, to women he was false. He understood the obligation 
of his promissory note, but for his promise of marriage, he had 
no sense of honor. He knew nothing of the fitness of time, place 
and subject. It was all one to him whether he told his filthiest 
stories to a preacher, on the hustings, or in a barroom. In his 
letter to Mrs. H. O. Browning, he makes cruel sport of Miss 
Mary Owen, who had rejected three times his offer of marriage. 
The letter is an attempt at wit. Although a pitiable failure as 
wit, it is proof of malice and of vulgarity, baseness, indecency 
and savage nakedness of soul. It is a shocking revelation. His 
vile thought was insulting to Mrs. Browning. The language 
deserves execration even in a bawdy-house. No people who 
respect and honor women would tolerate such an untutored 
savage. No woman should mention his name in praise until 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 287 

veiled to escape identity. The letter in full is in the Appendix 
to this book. It is given as his own contribution to the cloaca 
of his thoughts, and a commentary on the refinement and in- 
telligence of Lincoln's paean-singers and worshipers. 

It is claimed that he had a strong will ; that he was slow in 
reasoning, but, a conclusion once reached, no man could move 
him. This is not a bad definition of obstinacy, or of stubborn 
ignorance. **A wise man changes his mind — a fool, never." 
This quality, however strong, has never made any man great. 
Lincoln was a fatalist. He was in no sense a Christian. He 
rejected all religious creeds. He maintained as a part of his 
moral code that the most benevolent acts were dictated by 
selfishness. This gives the key to his desire to free the negroes. 
He was the victim of many superstitions. He often told his 
partner he would die in some horrible manner. When he left 
home to become President he said he would never return alive. 

On the quality of the third of his triune attributes — his 
mind — there was and is diversity of opinion. He was never a 
student, although anxious to be a scholar. Herndon says he 
never read any book from beginning to end. Yet he was a dili- 
gent reader. He always read aloud. Often, while Herndon was 
busy studying a case, Lincoln would lie down, prop up his heels, 
and when apparently in deep thought he would burst out in 
loud laughter at some dirty story. He would delay clients from 
giving the firm business, to spin yarns ; and although he would 
repeat stories a hundred times, he invariably laughed as loud 
and as long as any listener to whom the story was new. He 
had but one rival in thus applauding his own performance. The 
State of Georgia produced a black negro who was blind, and 
an idiot in every respect except in music. He was called "Blind 
Tom," As a musician he was the most wonderful of all musi- 
cians. He toured America and Europe, When he finished a 
piece he would rise from the piano stool, clap his hands and 
applaud as wildly as any of his audience, 

Herndon says his partner "was inordinately ambitious." 
That passion "to figure in the world's eyes" mastered all 
others. The allurement of political office caused neglect of the 
business of life. Defeat could not abash him. He rose from 
the ground to pursue office with renewed energy. But his mind 



288 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

was overshadowed. He was pursued in every position in life 
by melancholia — a grade of insanity. He told his intimate 
friends he dared not carry even a pocket knife because he feared 
he might commit suicide. As to whether the bar sinister attached 
to his birth preyed on his mind, or melancholia was innate, there 
was difference of opinion among those who knew him best. 
This dark shadow enveloped him when he emerged from the 
cave of his birth, and it may be truly said that "Melancholia 
claimed him as her own" to the hour when his presentiment of 
a violent death was resolved into prophecy. The assertion that 
he was perfidious and dishonorable to women must not be left 
supported only by his letter to Mrs. Browning, mocking and 
ridiculing Miss Owen — his second love. That puts him under 
the ban of all who are not touched with negrophilism to the 
extent of fanatical blindness and of insensibility to decency, 
and to what is due to their own mothers, wives, daughters and 
sisters. But his conduct in his third affair of the heart, if it 
may be so dignified, was as dishonorable as it was cruel, and as 
cruel as a stab through the heart by an Apache. 

Lincoln, in his boyhood, led the life of a vagabond — ^that is, 
his career was aimless. He was like driftwood. He had no 
steady employment. He split rails. He drifted down on a raft 
to New Orleans for $8.00 per month. He umpired dog-fights, 
cock-fights, wrestling matches and foot-races. He clerked in a 
store awhile ; then cut cordwood. He and a Mr. Berry bought 
on credit the stock of a failing store-keeper, and while Lincoln 
engaged customers at one end of the store with vulgar tales 
and politics. Berry, at the other end, was drinking up the stock 
of whiskey. It needs no historian to write the epitaph of the 
firm of Lincoln & Berry. When Black Hawk, the Indian Chief, 
crossed the Mississippi, east, in violation of the treaty, Lincoln 
became a warrior. His company marched and counter marched 
— feeding on the fat of the land — but could not see the Indians. 
But the Union got the benefit of Lincoln's experience in mer- 
chandizing and in that war. It equipped him to manage with 
brilliant success the business of the federal government, and at 
the same time to maneuver three million warriors against the 
South. The world has been assured a million times that he 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 289 

saved the Union, But his panegyrists are not just to the firm 
of Lincoln & Berry and to Black Hawk, to whose training Lin- 
coln's ability as a savior was due. 

He had three thrills of the heart before it was calmed 
by matrimony. His first love was Miss Anne Rutledge — a fair, 
fragile beauty. Whether they were ever plighted is a mooted 
question. But she wasted away, and in 1835, with the Autumn 
leaves, she perished. The second was Miss Mary Owen of Ken- 
tucky, to whom he thrice offered the crown, and who, like Cae- 
sar, thrice refused to wear it. Of her the brutal letter was 
written by the rejected lover to Mrs. Browning. Miss Owen 
was intellectual, was highly educated, and possessed much of 
this world's lucre, of which Lincoln had none. 

The third was Miss Mary E. Todd of Kentucky, whose lin- 
eage alone was a rich legacy. She was educated in a convent in 
Kentucky, spoke French like a Parisian, and of her ancestors 
in the maternal line two had been Governors, and one Secretary 
of the Navy under President Tyler, Her sister had married a 
Mr, Ninian Edwards and they resided in Springfield, Illinois — 
Lincoln's home. On a visit to her sister, Miss Mary and Lincoln 
met. To shorten the story, Lincoln offered his hand and heart. 
She could see nothing in him that evoked any responsive emo- 
tion. But after importunity for months by Lincoln and his 
friends, she assented. The day for the wedding was appointed. 
Mrs, Edwards went to the trouble and expense of renovating 
home and furniture. A feast rich and bountiful was prepared. 
Invitations went into Kentucky as well as through Springfield, 
A minister was engaged, and the hour set for the joyous cere- 
mony. On the appointed night the feast was spread, the invited 
guests assembled and the minister was promptly on hand. The 
bride expectant sat with several selected bridesmaids in a room 
separate from the guests, awaiting the hour appointed. The 
happy hour struck, but the bridegroom had not arrived. Con- 
versation was resumed but it was spasmodic. The quarter after 
was marked off by the hands on the dial, and the bridegroom 
was still delinquent. Whispered surmises floated around the 
room. ' * He must be unavoidably detained ' ' — * ' Something very 
unusual has occurred" — "It may be he has suddenly become 
sick." Conversation languished. Time tolled off a half -hour 



290 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

— but the bridegroom did not relieve the tense anxiety. "Oh! 
he'll be here soon" — ''he's a man of the highest sense of honor. 
Be patient." Who but a woman can know the emotions of 
that bride expectant at that hour — wavering between faith and 
doubt, hope and fear, shame and indignation? The tension 
grew painful. An hour passed. Then the chivalry of man for 
woman flamed up. Young men rushed to the street and, scat- 
tering, began a hot search for the culprit. They visited all 
known haunts of the story-teller — inquired of all passers-by — 
and returned with imprecations to inform the bewildered as- 
semblage that they found no trace of the betrayer of the 
betrothed. 



CHAPTER XU. 

ABOUT LINCOLN'S PUBLIC RECORD, AND 

A PURITAN ABOLITIONIST'S VIEW 

OF PROPERTY AND TITLE. 

The world, since the war of Abolition, has heard nothing but 
praise of Lincoln, As "no man is perfect — no, not one," there 
must be another side to this wonderful mortal. If there be — 
and as biography is the base of all history — any acts or sayings 
that can supplement what has been written and spoken of him 
should be made a part of history. Audi alteram partem — 
"hear the other side" — is a wise maxim of the Romans, in- 
tended to establish justice. There is not much to be said that 
is not praise — would there were none — but that little may be 
instructive and illuminating, though not acceptable to hero- 
worshipers. Infatuation is an ailment difficult to cure. It 
borders on another malady which prompted the wisest of poets 
to write — "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?" Indeed, 
when infatuation fastens on a living object, nothing can shake it 
loose but a rude rebuff, or shock, by the object itself. As the 
subject of this unbounded admiration has passed from earth 
back to earth, there can be no rebuff — no shock. Rather, as 
the tender roots of a near-by tree, seeking nurture, pierce the 
new-turned mold to reach the inanimate dust it sheltered in 
life, and flourish by what they feed on, so this passion that 
required Caesarian surgery by Death to give it birth, now 
descends into the grave and hourly grows on the meager glory 
it finds buried there. Without resort to records made by ful 
some flatterers, or sincere adorers, or by the pestilent parasites 
that feed on real or imaginary greatness, I shall confine this 
presentation of Lincoln to the public record made by himself 
and his friends. The deductions made therefrom must stand 
or fall on their merits. The record no worshiper can be mad 
enough to deny. 



292 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Mr, Lincoln was a lawyer. He had studied the Constitution 
of the United States. He was a close observer. He knew well 
the political situation in the Union ; the causes of sectional di- 
vision; the intense feeling on both sides. He knew the South 
did not import negroes and make slaves of them. He knew 
New England had begun that traffic and kept it up from 1636 
far into the nineteenth century. If he read the history of Massa- 
chusetts, he knew that she, as a body politic, established the 
slave trade for profit, and that she never repealed by statute, 
after repeated attempts, negro slavery. Born in 1809 he lived 
through the entire period of sectional hostility brewed by slav- 
ery. He was 21 when the Hayne-Webster debate occurred. He 
saw the rise of the anti-slavery movement — saw it take form — 
was of age when Lovejoy, one of the first agitators, was mur- 
dered in Lincoln's own State — Illinois. He saw abolition so- 
cieties start and grow into thousands. He knew that the 
Constitution recognized the negroes as personal property, and 
provided that slaves escaped into free States should be deliv- 
ered to their owners. He knew of the ** Underground Rail- 
road" — that it was used to aid thieves to carry the slaves to 
free States and Canada. He knew the criminal laws and what 
was defined as theft, and that men and women were engaged 
in stealing slaves (personal property) and sending them into 
Canada. He knew that act was theft and that the actors ("let 
the galled jade wince") were thieves. Of these criminals 
he, also, knew the Abolition Party was composed, and that they 
were of his supporters when he was nominated and elected 
President. He knew they were of the breed of New England 
religious fanatics, and that religious fanatics believe, as did and 
do the Puritans, that what they do is approved by God, and 
they stop at no barriers and obey no law exept their own will. 
He knew that, from the first Congress (1789) to 1860, thesi 
fanatics petitioned Congress to abolish negro slavery, and that, 
as he often said in his debates with Stephen A. Douglas, Con- 
gress had not the power to abolish, or in any wise to interlei'e 
with slavery in the States. He was in Congress m 1847-9 ami 
heard these petitions read. In proof of the lawlessness and 
murderous intent of these fanatics, he had before him the in- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 293 

vasion of Virginia by John Brown and followers, to massacre 
men, women and children, and to free their slaves. 

With all the enormities done in Kansas, and by Brown iu 
Kansas and Virginia; the many thousands of negroes stolen, 
the avowed purpose of the Abolitionists to free the slaves in 
all the Southern States ; the statutes passed by eleven Northern 
States to nullify the statutes of Congress to carry into effect 
the clause in the Constitution requiring escaped slaves to be de- 
livered to their owners — with all these, and much more too 
numerous to tell, known by Lincoln, his ungovernable ambition 
to rise from his humble beginning to the Presidency of the 
United States, made him sink all consideration of justice and 
right and humanity, and put his name before a convention of 
religious fanatics, of men who gloried in stealing negroes; of 
men who had denounced the Constitution as "a covenant with 
Death and an agreement with Hell," and who swore they would 
not be controlled by the Constitution, as they had found a 
"Higher Law" than that damnable paper. 

No learning is required to know the meaning of the word, 
"mob." A child, seeing it, defines it by agitation, fear and 
feeling of horror. This boastful land of Freedom, Liberty and 
Law has been, to some extent, under mobocracy since the first 
mob razed to the ground a market house in Boston, until the 
adjournment of the last convention of Republicans in Chicago 
that nominated President Wm. H. Taft for re-election. Mob- 
ocracy is the legitimate offspring of Puritanism. But we must 
trace a mob to its development as it was when Lincoln, in 1860, 
put himself at its head to lead it. For this we give "Webster's 
definition of Conspiracy: 

1. "A combination of men for an evil purpose; an agree- 
ment between two or more persons to commit some crime in 
concert." 

2. "One who conspires; who engages in a plot to commit 
a crime, particularly treason. ' ' 

As to what act, among many others, is revolution or treason, I 
quote another great New England authority — another Webster, 
named Daniel. Li reply to Calhoun in 1833, he said: "What 
is revolution? Why, Sir, that is revolution which overturns, 
or controls, or successfully resists the existing public authority ; 



294 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

that which arrests the supreme authority, that which arrests 
the supreme power." Again, he said: **An attempt by a State 
to abrogate, annul, or nullify an act of Congress, or to arrest 
its operation within her limits, is a direct usurpation of the 
just power of the general government, and of the equal rights 
of the States ; a plain violation of the Constitution, and a pro- 
ceeding essentially revolutionary in its character and 
tendency." 

It were idle to cudgel the brain to phrase a better indict- 
ment of the horde of Abolitionists, Free-soilers and Revolution- 
ists, who in Northern legislatures passed laws * * to resist, arrest, 
and annul, within their States, the laws enacted by Congress" 
to compel the rendition of fugitive slaves. What did they care 
for laws which were "the supreme authority" in the Union? 
What was an oath to them to support the Constitution ? What ? 
They were acting in obedience to their "Higher Law" — the 
same law negroes and other thieves obey when they start out 
for a white man's henroost, or a bank, a horse, or a hog. What 
did they care for the commandment "Thou shalt not steal?" 
If the law of God could not hold them back from crime, of what 
avail was man's law in every State in the Union, defining lar- 
ceny to be — "The wrongful and fraudulent taking and carry- 
ing away by any person of the personal property of another 
with intent to steal the same?" With the impudence and de- 
fiance of law that mark the trail of the Puritans in England 
and Holland, and their bloody tracks for near a century after 
they set foot in America, they shout back at us — "What? A 
negro, property? A human being — made in the image of his 
Maker — a slave and property? There is no law for it! It is 
contrary to our opinion. Our opinion is our law — the only law 
we intend to obey — have ever obeyed. Our oath to support the 
Constitution and laws of Congress is not binding on us. The 
Constitution says nothing about negro slaves and property in 
negro slaves. We have the same right to construe the Consti- 
tution that Congress has to construe it. Besides, that old papei* 
is "a covenant with Death and an agreement with Hell. Away 
with it!" 

Calhoun did not make a stronger argument in support of 
Nullification than the above defiance persistently made by Puri- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 295 

tan Abolitionists for forty years, on the hustings, on platforms, 
in Northern pulpits, and in Congress. Here follows a wild 
raging of these Puritan fanatics and Patriots, murdering thou- 
sands each day ''to preserve the Constitution!" Coffroth, a 
member of Congress from Pennsylvania, had just said in a 
speech on the Resolution before Congress in 1864 for adding a 
13th amendment to the Constitution: "I care not whether slav- 
ery is retained or abolished by the people of the States in which 
it exists — the only rightful authority. The question with me is, 
has Congress the right to take from the people of the South 
thefr property * * * Would it be less than stealing?" To 
which the Puritan Abolitionist, Famworth, of Ohio, replied: 
"What constitutes property? I know it is said by some gentle- 
men on the other side that what the statute makes property, is 
property. I deny it! What 'vested right' has any man or State 
in property in man? We of the North hold property, not by 
virtue of statute law, but by virtue of enactments. Our property 
consists in lands, chattels and things. Our property was made 
property by Jehovah when He gave man dominion over it. But 
nowhere did He give dominion of man over man. Our title ex- 
tends back to the foundation of the world. That constitutes 
property ! There is where we get our title ! There is where we 
get our 'vested rights' to property !" 

Before resuming the line on Lincoln, I drop a few remarks 
on this view of property and title to it, Mr. Famsworth, in the 
froth of debate, evidently was not thinking of New England. 
Her title to "land, chattels, and things" is not so ancient as that 
of Farnsworth's "we" — by which he, no doubt, meant the "we, 
the people" Daniel Webster was sole proprietor of by discovery 
of them in the preamble to the Constitution. New England's 
title to "land" did not reach back "to the foundation of the 
world." It was acquired mainly by killing Indians. Her title 
to "chattels and things" was acquired in various ways — some 
things (which may include money) by smuggling, some by sell- 
ing in the West Indies, as slaves, Indians captured in war ; some 
by fines imposed on Quakers for not taking off their hats ; some 
by forcing prisoners to work, under penalty, if they refused, of 
sitting in the stocks ; some by tying them to a cart-tail and whip- 
ping their bare backs while they were dragged through three 



296 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

towns ; some by fines for failure to attend ' ' divine service ' ' on 
Sabbaths, there to suffer for two hours, listening to discourses 
in monotone on infants in Hell, Salvation by Faith, Hell-fire 
and Eternal Damnation. Her title to negro slaves, with which 
she stocked the Southern colonies and States, did not date far- 
ther back than 1638. She must have felt grossly insulted by the 
charge, made by the Honorable Farnsworth in open session of 
the House of Congress, that she had no title to negroes she ran 
down, bought with rum, and stole in Africa, and made slaves, 
and, as soon the black cargo could reach the Western Con- 
tinent, added fraud to theft by announcing that she had 
perfect title to the slaves, whereas she had none whatever, except 
that of a buccaneer or pirate — that is, if the Honorable Farns- 
worth 's information about titles to "chattels and things" was as 
thorough as his knowledge of what the Lord intended, when He 
was laying "the foundation of the "World," should be good 
title to "land, chattels and things" in the Northern States. 

The Honorable Farnsworth of Ohio was so radical a Puritan 
and Abolitionist as to forget that the title to the land his house 
stood on, as a part of Ohio, was given by Virginia in 1787 to the 
United States. As "we of the North" derived title from Jeho- 
vah, he had, probably, traced Ohio's title beyond that of Virginia. 
If so, the next link, back, he found in James I, who gave the 
land to Virginia. But he could not stop at the King. He must 
trace her title — (what a laborious man that Farnsworth was!) 
Let us see what that man did to find out whether the title to his 
"home, chattels and things" was perfect. He started to examine 
the records under Queen Elizabeth — who was the last of the 
Tudors. He then ran back through the reign of the House of 
York, or the White Eose, then of the House of Lancaster, or the 
Red Rose, He has now been at work through 159 years. Next 
he took up the Plantagenets through eight reigns. That landed 
him up against William the Conqueror, when history records 
there were many new deals in lands by robbing Peter to pay 
Paul. But between Elizabeth and the Conqueror thousands of 
titles had been broken by breaking necks with ropes, and by 
drawing and quartering. Some had fallen in by the "statute" 
of l\rortmain, or it might have been by "enactments" — a differ- 
ent process according to Mr. Farnsworth; some by attainder, a 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 297 

few by escheat; some by failure of inheritable blood; some by 
prsemunire; others by "Treason!" ** Rebellion!" "Conspir- 
acy ! ' ' — each the real, genuine, simon-pure article — none of that 
miserable second-hand, hand-me-down shoddy stuff like that 
the Union soldiers had to wear; not a base imitation "Rebellion 
and Treason" the Southern Rebels and Traitors got up — so poor 
a counterfeit that the "Nation" didn't think it good enough to 
be hung or shot for. So the Nation just took up a small soldier 
named Wirz and a poor old woman named Surratt and hanged 
them, thereby hanging the Southern Traitors and Rebels, just as 
many thousands of brave, valiant Abolitionists fought and died 
during the war — ^by substitute. 

All the foregoing methods of acquiring title to "land, chattels 
and things, "besides many more, had to be examined and decided 
on before going beyond William the Conqueror. But this un- 
daunted Puritan investigator went on through the rule of the 
Saxons, then the Danes, then Anglo-Saxons, then the Saxons 
alone, and back to Julius Caesar, before Christ. That carried him 
to Rome. There anybody but Hercules or Farnsworth would have 
thrown up the job, for he found there, after Rome had ruled 
nearly the whole world for 1200 years, the same state of things 
we have accomplished in vainly trying to rule ourselves only 124 
years. That is, he found there a few grantees holding the land 
throughout the empire, as he found to be the case in this empire, 
but he found millions of grantors — too numerous to mention. 
After verifying the title of "we in the North" to their land, as 
Aeneas, it is said, founded Rome before Romulus and Remus 
sucked the wolf, Farnsworth had then to go to Troy and begin 
to excavate, and read the runic or cuneiform bricks to trace his 
title. He found, ilo doubt, the hilt of the sword with which 
Pyrrhus hacked old King Priam into fish-bait; the spindle of 
the chariot that dragged Hector around the wall; Cassandra's 
veil, that she wore when prophesying; the heel of Achilles that 
received his death wound, and a few of the weary sighs Troilus 
breathed "from the Trojan wall to the Grecian camp where Cres- 
sid lay that night." Thence this explorer passed eastward, into 
the shadows, first, then the twilight, the gloom, and then the 
night that shrouded the earth a hundred million years after its 
"foundation was laid," before he met the Lord and got 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 298 

the title to "land, chattels and things" for "we of the North" 
— negro slaves not being included. The most valuable result of 
this research through so many million years is that he proves 
his grandfathers, who warranted the title to the slaves they sold 
to us of the South, to be arrant knaves, cheats and swindlers. 
Let us hope he ran himself into that hole without seeing it. A 
fanatic plunging on under such a head of steam as Farnsworth 
got up, so that he took "enactments" for the Decalogue, 
couldn't tell a hole from a comet, and would take a negro for his 
grandfather. 

What marvelous acumen these fanatics have "to sever and 
divide a hair 'twixt north and northwest side," — to draw a line 
wide as a gulf between "statutes" and "enactments." This 
fancied power is the ecstasy of madness, after o'erleaping all 
barriers and restraints of law to establish order among men, and 
becoming the confidant and spokesmen of God, and co-Directors 
with God in governing His footstool. It is Puritanism, grim, 
merciless, infallible, defiant, stamping down its plighted faith 
and honor, and standing triumphant upon them. Puritans sold 
the slaves to the South under guaranty of title, and afterwards 
pledged "their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor" in 
maintaining and defending the life, liberty and property of all 
the colonies ; and again by signing and adopting the Constitution 
that declared the title to slaves they had given, to be "double 
sure." 

In an early chapter the Puritans' deficiency in reverence for 
ancestry, indifference to their forbears of merited distinction, 
was shown in the names given by them to counties and towns, 
mountains and rivers, inlets and bays, in their colonies and 
States. This uncouthness and neglect was not an oversight. A 
thousand acts, like links in a chain forged one at a time, re- 
peated through two centuries, are not done by mistake. Such 
barbarous outward shapes and images are reflected by the mir- 
ror fixed by nature steadfast in the mind or spirit. And that 
mirror has been a spiritual heirloom down from father to son 
for many centuries — that insensibility — that hebetude to family 
pride — that disrespect for distinguished fathers and citizens. 
Their fathers and grandfathers of the strictest Puritan sect 
helped to frame the Constitution, and then adopted it as their 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE S OUTH 299 

palladium. It was pronounced, the world over, man's wisest 
conception. But the children of those wise and patriotic sires 
rise up by millions and damn them as the authors of a writing 
by which they entered into a covenant with Death and Hell, — 
an anathema framed and hurled at their immortal shades by a 
son of Puritans, and he stands honored by Puritans on a monu- 
ment in Boston. 



CHAPTER XUI. 

LINCOLN AND THE CHICAGO CONVEN- 
TION THAT NOMINATED HIM IN 1860— 
SEWARD, BEECHER, PARKER AND 
OTHER ABOLITIONISTS AND 
ANARCHISTS. 

I return to speak directly of Lincoln. I was classifying the 
lawless elements that nominated him for President, when I 
thought it would not be time lost to accompany Farnsworth in 
his only attempt to find the Lord. I must ask indulgence for 
applying plain Anglo-Saxon to those elements. It is not my 
habit, nor my taste, but this occasion must be an exception. The 
President of the Confederate States^ their Generals, and the rank 
and file, and all who felt as they felt, have been slandered, ma- 
ligned, vilified, besides being branded as rebels and traitors, for 
near fifty years in every country on the Earth. Men of educa- 
tion, by applying "rebels and traitors" to Southern men of all 
classes, have taught the ignorant, the malicious, and the vile to 
roll those words as sweet morsels on the tongue. There were no 
rebels, no traitors, nor perjurers in the South. There were no 
rebels in the North, but there were perjurers by the thousands, 
traitors by the tens of thousands, thieves by the hundreds of 
thousands and revolutionists by the millions. These are plain, 
blunt, unvarnished words. They are used not from habit, or 
choice, or desire. They are employed only because the paucity of 
the English language offers no other words that can be enrolled 
as substitutes ; because, in criminal pleadings, these words are of 
ancient and highly honorable standing; and because Christ, the 
supreme Master of adaptation, when he wished to impress the 
world with his conception of the enormity of certain sins, always 
pressed into service words that gave the clearest idea of the sins, 
words that needed no interpretation, and that the simplest mind 
could understand. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 801 

I left Lincoln at the Chicago Convention^ made up of a motley 
crew — men who, he knew, as lawyers, had sworn to support the 
Constitution and laws enacted by Congress; and who as legisla- 
tors, after being sworn again to support the Constitution, had 
forthwith voted for a statute intended to "resist, annul and 
nullify Acts of Congress" passed at the mandate of the Constitu- 
tion. These men, beyond quibble, were perjurers and revolution- 
ists. Again, Lincoln knew that he had supporters in that con- 
vention who were conspirators with the other men, and with 
women and boys, who did the active work in stealing slaves and 
speeding them to Canada, or any other hiding place. He often 
said slaves were property. The raiders^ and the operators of the 
under-ground railroad, were as clearly thieves as men who steal 
horses, hogs, or gold. And as all conspirators are equally guilty 
of the crime committed by one or more, he was supported in that 
Convention by a gang of thieves. It was by the application of 
the principle of law stated above that the court attempted to jus- 
tify the hanging of Mrs. Surratt for the killing of Lincoln by 
John "Wilkes Booth. The traitors were the men who joined the 
federal army and made war on the States of their birth, homes, 
and allegiance. This will be shown by the Law of Nations. 

The foregoing covers the four classes — Perjurers, Revolu- 
tionists, Thieves and Traitors — who, except the last class, nomi- 
nated Abraham Lincoln for President, and whose characters and 
crimes he knew. The law makes no distinctions in crime. It does 
not call a poor man who steals a loaf, a thief, and a rich man 
who steals millions an " appropriator. " It does not call a poor 
man who steals a coat, a thief, and a rich woman who "lifts" a 
diamond a "kleptomaniac." It calls the man who steals what 
the law of man describes to be personal property a thief, and 
does not call the man who ignores man's statute law and steals 
the same property, a philanthropist, a patriot, a hero! It calls 
the man who "whistles down the wind" the statute laws, and 
defies the organic law of the government that protects him, an 
Anarchist, and denounces him as only fit for treason. 

When Henry Ward Beecher took the two negro women — 
slaves — in a carriage from Cincinnati into the woods between 
midnight and dawn to be sent to Canada, he was stealing; he 
was as complete a thief as if he had that night sneaked into a 



802 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

farmer's lot and stolen and hid in the woods two sows. When 
Theodore Parker, another of New England's most holy pro- 
claimers of God's command — "Thou shalt not steal" — ^to vile, 
low, lawless sinners, received and hid away for months the two 
slaves — William and Ellen Crafts — and then raised money for 
their passage, and took them disguised to the ship and sent them 
to Europe — he was a thief. He was a Puritan fanatic, a 
clerical ruffian, before he became an avowed thief. It was he 

and William Ellery Channing, Baker and a few 

others, who kicked holes in their surplices, and then dragged 
Christ from his triune seat in Heaven to the Earth, and made 
him sit down by Confucius, Buddha, Socrates and Zoroaster. 

When William H. Seward, with a genius for evil unsur- 
passed, announced his discovery of "Higher Law" than the 
Statutes of Congress, than decisions of the Supreme Court, 
than the Constitution, he was a Revolutionist, in morals and 
law a traitor; and, in fact, the boldest propagandist of multi- 
form crime — theft, treason and murder. He begat John Brown, 
who murdered men and boys as a hunter shoots wolves. He 
sired that nest of vipers — Thad Stevens, Ben Wade, John P. 
Hale, and thousands more. He flyblew corruption a continent 
wide, that hatched a multitudinous winged brood with poison- 
ous sting — crawling by night, flying by day, and breeding as 
they crawled, so numerous that, like the locusts of Egypt, they 
eclipsed the land in gloom and despair for twenty years, and 
swarming tumultuously above the Constitution, settled down 
upon it, and extinguished its guiding, vital light. It is behind 
this "Higher Law" these wreckers of statute law and the Con- 
stitution — yea, and of the Republic — seek refuge. While they 
find there a far higher order of society than they have ever 
seen or enjoyed, still, there is one quality common to both the 
humble refugees and the royal dwellers. That quality is 
tyranny, despotism, unbridled oppression, for there repose the 
tyrants and despots of all the ages. These refugees are there 
ensconced, hugger-mugger — cheek by jowl — with the Thirty 
Tyrants of Athens, with Dionysius of Syracuse with his "ear 
of stone," with Catherine of Russia, Bloody Mary, and a legion 
more. They, too, had their "Higher Law." It is the plea of 
a tyrant when he wants money, dominion, pleasure, or blood. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 303 

The tyrant Appius Claudius pleaded it when he lusted for the 
beautiful Virginia, who only escaped him by the dagger of 
her devoted father. Nero asserted it when he wished "to rid 
Rome" of his adoptive brother, his wife and his mother, whom 
he murdered. The man who defies law and pleads public 
necessity, or the public good, as Lincoln did, in justification 
of his unlawful deeds is unfit for rule — is already a despot. 

It is clear that Lincoln was nominated — 

1st. By men, who, after swearing to support the Consti- 
tution and the laws of Congress, passed statutes to annul a 
part of the Constitution, and two acts of Congress. They 
were perjured — and Lincoln knew it. 

2nd. By men who "resisted and annulled and defied the 
Acts of Congress. ' ' They were Revolutionists and conspirators 
— and Lincoln knew it. 

3rd. By men who had been in a conspiracy to aid and 
abet in the crime of stealing slaves — personal property. They 
were conspirators and thieves — and Lincoln knew it. Revolu- 
tion is rebellion and those engaged in it are Revolutionists and 
traitors. This, also, Lincoln knew. 

These were the men Lincoln solicited to nominate and to 
elect him President. These were the men who elected him. 
It is not intended to intimate that Lincoln had committed any 
one of the four crimes his supporters had been guilty of. That 
question will come up after his inauguration. It is only said 
here that, knowing the criminality of the men in the conven- 
tion, he accepted the nomination tendered by them and put him- 
self at their head as their leader. It is a significant fact, and 
one to be borne in mind, that the anarchist who proclaimed 
the traitors' creed that there was a "higher law" than the 
Constitution and the statutes of Congress, was Lincoln's fore- 
most opponent :for that nomination, and that Lincoln selected 
that Anarchist for the highest position in his Cabinet — that of 
Secretary of State. "Anarchist" is the only word that de- 
scribes him. The man who denies the binding authority on him of 
the highest laws of his country, and that after he had sworn time 
and again to obey and to uphold those laws, is the man who 
among all civilized peoples is known as an anarchist. Lincoln 
knew that Seward proclaimed that new political treason, and 
he knew it was the spirit and life of anarchy. 



304 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Again ; Seward started life as a teacher in Putnam County, 
Georgia, where he became embittered against Southern people 
because he was not received as his vanity and Puritan impu- 
dence coached him to believe he should be. Probably there was 
not a community in the South more cultured and refined than 
that of Putnam County. This "Yankee school-teacher," by 
nature uncouth and presuming, was considered as persona non 
grata in that quite, gentle society, famous for strong men and 
beautiful women. Seward left there with vengeance in his 
heart and negro in his brain. From Lincoln's intimacy with 
Seward, from 1847 to 1861, he knew Seward's social reception 
in Georgia, and Seward's hostility to the South. 

Again; Lincoln was not only an Abolitionist, but history 
says he lectured on abolition in his State. Under a placid ex- 
terior he was ready to go to extreme lengths on anti-slavery. 
Li his debate with Stephen A. Douglas when running for the 
United States Senate, he imagined a state of facts and stated 
his fancies to be facts. For instance, he charged a conspiracy 
hatched by Douglas, President Pierce, James Buchanan and 
Chief Justice Taney, that the decision in the Dred Scott case 
should be held up until the election for Pierce's successor 
should occur in 1856. He had not the courage to call the names. 
He supposed a house built by "Stephen, Franklin, James and 
Roger" — the christened names of those gentlemen. He was so 
hostile to that decision that he advocated in that debate a re- 
organization of the Supreme Court to get it reversed. He said : 
"I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any Aboli- 
tionist — I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet 
about it," etc. 

Lincoln said he maintained that each State had the right to 
do exactly as it pleased with all the concerns within that State 
that interfered with the rights of no other State, and that the 
general government, upon principle, has no right to interfere 
with anything other than that general class of things that does 
concern the whole. Slavery was that class of things which he 
believed concerned the whole, that is, all the States. He had 
just said, in the same sentence — "I believe each individual is 
naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself, and the fruit 
of his labor." And in the next paragraph, speaking of slavery. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 305 

he said — "this matter of keeping one-sixth of the population of 
the whole Nation in a state of oppression and tyranny un- 
equalled in the world." 

Eeplying to the charge made by Douglas that he would not 
abide by the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, 
Lincoln said: "Just so. We let this property (the slave, Dred 
Scott) abide by the decision, but we will try to reverse that 
decision. We mean to do what we can to have the Court decide 
the other way. That is one thing we ("Abolitionists") mean 
to try to do. ' ' 



CHAPTER XLm. 

SOMETHING OF THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS 
DEBATE— QUOTATIONS FROM LIN- 
COLN'S FIRST INAUGURAL 
ADDRESS. 

Douglas in one debate charged Lincoln with deception — 
with "trying to fool the people" of Illinois by making one 
speech in the Northern end of the State and another altogether 
different in the Southern, or "Egj^pt" — the Democratic por- 
tion. Douglas then read the platform of the Abolitionists, 
pledging the Abolitionists to do many things, among them, to 
repeal and entirely abrogate the Fugitive Slave Law, and 
declaring that Congress had no power to pass such a law, that 
"that power belonged to the States," and charged Lincoln 
with standing on that platform. Jn the fifth joint debate 
Lincoln said: "The negro was included in the Declaration of 
Independence." He asserted many times that "this country 
could not exist half free and half slave," and, as he was an 
Abolitionist and denounced slavery as "tyranny and oppres- 
sion unequaled in the world," and as he declared, further, that 
this country could never be all-slave, we have no trouble in 
deciding what was in his mind and heart when he took his 
oath as President. 

The tiny biography of Lincoln given by Douglas in their 
first joint debate is not devoid of significance. "We were both 
comparatively boys. I was a school-teacher in Winchester 
(111.) and he was a flourishing grocery-keeper in Salem. He 
was just as good at telling an anecdote as now. He could beat 
any of the boys wrestling, or running a foot-race, in pitching 
quoits, or tossing a copper ; could ruin more liquor than all the 
boys of the town together, and the dignity and impartiality 
with which he presided at a horse-race, or fist-fight, excited 
the admiration of every boy that was present and par- 
ticipated." 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 307 

In the seventh joint-debate Douglas said — "Lincoln was in 
Congress in 1847 while the Mexico-American "War was on ; thus 
he voted for Ashmun's Resolution declaring that war uncon- 
stitutional and unjust." Douglas then adds : '* It is one thing 
to be opposed to starting a war, and another and very different 
thing to take sides with the enemy against your own country, 
after war has commenced." It was on that Resolution that 
Tom Corwin of Ohio uttered the celebrated sentence — ''The 
Mexicans should welcome the soldiers of the United States with 
hospitable hands to bloody graves." 

Lincoln had boasted often that he was an ' * Old-Line Henry 
Clay Whig ' ' — a strong friend of Clay. In the seventh and last 
debate Douglas said: "You have read the speech of Gen. 
Singleton at Jacksonville" (during this joint debate). "He 
charges that at a Whig caucus in 1847, held — during a conven- 
tion in this State — at the home of Lincoln's brother-in-law, 
Lincoln proposed to throw Henry Clay overboard and take up 
Gen. Taylor, and that in the National Convention in Phila- 
delphia of the Whig Party, Singleton met Lincoln there, the 
bitter and deadly enemy of Clay; that Lincoln tried to keep 
him (Singleton) out of the Convention because he insisted on 
voting for Clay, and that Lincoln rejoiced with great joy over 
the mangled remains of his friend, Henry Clay. 

"When the Wilmot Proviso, that disturbed the peace of the 
whole country until it shook the foundation of the Republic 
from center to circumference, was pending in Congress in 
1848-9, Lincoln was in Congress, and is the man who, in con- 
nection with Seward, Chase, Giddings and other Abolitionists, 
got up that strife. And I have heard LincoLn boast that he 
voted forty-two times for the Wilmot Proviso, and would have 
voted as many times more if he could." 

I have thus gone back to Lincoln's youth, traced him in 
early manhood from his first appearance in public life as a 
member of the Legislature of Illinois in 1836, then his election 
to Congress in 1846, and then through his debates with Douglas 
in 1858, and to his election as President in 1860. This ancient 
and forgotten lore is tedious reading, but it throws a calcium 
light on the acts of the man from the date when he as Presi- 
dent swore to support the Constitution, to the hour when he 



308 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

was summoned to Judgment * ' with all his imperfections on his 
head." The reader who studies the brief record just given 
above, with the thought of a student and knowledge of the 
human heart — "deceitful above all things," even when not 
"desperately wicked;" who knows the perilous brink on which 
fanaticism confidently takes its stand, when, having turned 
its back on all human laws, it imagines it can hear the voice 
of God, and enter into His counsels, and steal the secrets of His 
Providence, will be better prepared to interpret the meaning 
of much that is veiled in the secret alphabet of thoughts 
unexpressed. 

During the last and furious debate, or row, in Congress in 
1860 before the American Kepublic went down, Lincoln sat low 
with his ears to the ground. "When any proposition was made 
looking to a compromise, he telegraphed to representatives 
from Illinois not to agree to anything that could possibly add 
one more foot of slave territory to the Union. This is further 
proof of Lincoln's hostility to slavery, if any more than his 
own declaration in the joint debate were needed. But it shows 
another important fact — his purpose was to arrest the growth 
of the South and make all new States free, and when the 
fortieth State should be admitted, the free States, having a 
three-fourths' majority, could and would add an amendment 
to the Constitution abolishing negro slavery. I bring forward 
in this connection his declaration quoted above in the debate 
with Douglas, to-wit: "The general government, upon prin- 
ciple, has no right to interfere with anything in the States 
other than that general class of things that does concern the 
whole" — that is, all the States; and as he had asserted that 
Slavery concerned all the States, and we have here the key to his 
secret purpose. At that time (1858), he did not believe Seces- 
sion would occur. He believed, as did all, that the Democrats 
would continue in power indefinitely. This view is made still 
clearer when we recall the fury the Abolitionists exhibited 
when "Webster in his speech of March 7th, 1850, said if Texas 
should by vote of a majority of her citizens divide her terri- 
tory into five States, as was agreed by Congress, when Texas 
was admitted into the Union, that she might do, he would vote 
for the admission of the extra four States. That and his declara- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 809 

tion in the same speech that he could vote for a bill to require 
surrender to the master of fugitive slaves, was Webster's 
political death-warrant. 

In the last debate Douglas said: "Lincoln says that he 
looks forward to a time when slavery shall be abolished every- 
where. I look forward to a time when each State shall be al- 
lowed to do as it pleases. I care more for the principle of self- 
government than I do for all the negroes in Christendom. I 
would not endanger the perpetuity of the Union, I would not 
blot out the great inalienable rights of the white men, for all 
the negroes that ever existed. Mr. Lincoln went on to tell you 
that he does not desire to interfere with slavery in the States 
where it exists, nor does his Party. I expected him to say that 
down here," (Lower part of Illinois). ''Let me ask him, then, 
how he expects to put slavery in the course of ultimate extinc- 
tion everywhere, if he does not intend to interfere with it in 
the States where it exists? He will extinguish slavery in the 
States as the French General exterminatd the Algerians when 
he smoked them out. He is going to extinguish slavery by sur- 
rounding the slave States — hemming in the slaves and starving 
them out of existence as you smoke a fox out of his hole. Mr. 
Lincoln makes out that line of policy and appeals to the moral 
sense of justice and to the Christian feeling to sustain him. 
He says any man who holds to the contrary doctrine is in the 
attitude of the King who claims to govern by Divine Right." 

The last utterance of Douglas in this last debate tells, indi- 
rectly, the real cause of the war — the persistent interference 
by the Puritans with the domestic concerns of Southern States. 
He said: "If we will only live up to this great fundamental 
principle of non-interference, there will be peace between the 
North and the South. The only remedy and safety is that we 
shall stand by the Constitution as our Fathers made it; obey 
the laws as they are passed while they stand the proper test; 
and sustain the decisions of the Supreme Court and the consti- 
tuted authorities." 

We have heard Douglas charge Lincoln to his face as one of 
four conspirators who concocted the Wilmot Proviso to renew 
sectional strife and hate. They were Wm. H. Seward, Salmon 
P. Chase of Ohio, Joshua Giddings of Ohio, and Wilmot of 



310 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Pennsylvania, who fathered the Resolution in the House. Gid- 
dings was a rabid Abolitionist. So was Chase. Wilmot had no 
distinction, good or bad, except as a hater of the South. He 
was selected as the mouth-piece. Lincoln, when driven into 
the corner, or back to the rope, by Douglas in every debate, 
protested that he did not intend to interfere with slavery in the 
States; but he would not let it go into any territory, or new 
State, We shall see how near his acts after he got office follow 
his protestations when pleading for office. 

Let us see how, after swearing to support and defend the 
Constitution, he started off to support it. The Latins had a wise 
maxim — "a man is known by the company he keeps." There 
IS another common sense rule that every prudent man since men 
have done business always adopts. If he desires to fell a tree 
he uses a sharp axe and not a plow. If he would plow he does 
not use an axe. If he would build a house he does not employ 
a bar-keeper. If in power and he would govern with wisdom, 
justice .and mercy, he does not call to his side as aids men of 
lawless character. If elected by one section of a country di- 
vided into two hostile sections, he will not, if a wise and just 
ruler, select men as his advisers and to execute his orders, who 
hate the people of the other section. If it is his purpose to obey 
the laws, organic and statutory, and judicial decisions of the 
highest authority, would he choose an Anarchist as his first 
choice among seven advisers to be selected by him, and appoint 
that Anarchist to the highest and most responsible of all offices 
within his power? This interrogatory carries its own answer. 
No man not a lunatic would answer ''yes" to it. 

What did Lincoln do as soon as he swore to support the 
Constitution? He scanned the whole country, and, of all men 
of the thousands fit to be Secretary of State, he picked out the 
bitterest hater of the South and the man who, sitting in the 
United States Senate by authority of the Constitution — his only 
warrant for wearing the toga of a Senator — proclaimed him- 
self to be above that Constitution, above the statutes of Con- 
gress which he was sitting there to assist in passing, and above 
the decisions of the Supreme Court of the Government whose 
commission he was acting under. All this record of Wm. H. 
Seward Lincoln had known for years. And with that knowl- 
edge he selected that Anarchist as his chief counsellor — the only 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 311 

one of his Cabinet whose position and duties required him to 
deal with foreign nations, and with the South he so bitterly 
despised. 

Lincoln's next choice was one of the five conspirators, who, 
as Douglas — pointing his finger at Lincoln as one of the five — 
charged, had devised the Wilmot Proviso "to keep up the 
strife" between the two sections. This man was Salmon P. 
Chase — Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury — the man who was 
to counsel Lincoln and Congress how best to raise money to 
subdue the Confederate States. The other five members of his 
Cabinet were pliant under Lincoln's hand — ready to do his 
bidding without murmur, and not of sufficient force to merit 
further notice. Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, was noted 
as having great wealth acquired as Indian agent in the West. 
With these arrows in his quiver, Lincoln started on his Divine 
mission of love, mercy, justice and obedience to law. 

The counsellors and servitors were appointed on the 5th of 
March — the day following Lincoln's inauguration. Cameron, 
and Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, began at once to 
get ready the army and the navy "to preserve the Union" 
which had been rent by Webster in 1830, and "to uphold the 
Constitution and the laws" that had been violated in every way 
fanatics could devise for twenty-five years; that had been vio- 
lated, cursed, damned by negro thieves ; that had been violated 
by perjury committed by Conspirators and Revolutionists in 
eleven States who passed "Personal Liberty Laws" to resist 
and nullify the clause in the Constitution giving owners of 
fugitive slaves the right and means to recover them. Lincoln 
had given these Cabinet puppets full orders in his Inaugural — 
in language of unmistakable meaning. He said: 

"I consider, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the 
Union is unbroken, and, to the extent of my ability, I shall 
take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, 
that the laws of the Union shall be faithfully executed in all 
the States. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but 
only as the declared purpose of the Union, that it will CON- 
STITUTIONALLY defend and maintain itself. In doing this 
there need be no bloodshed, or violence, and there shall be none 
unless it is forced upon the National Authority. The power 
confided to me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the 



313 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

property and places belonging to the Government, and to col- 
lect the duties and imports, but beyond what may be necessary 
for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force 
against or among the people anywhere. Plainly, the central 
idea of Secession is the essence of Anarchy!" 

''High on a throne of royal state, which far 
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised 
To that bad eminence; and, from despair 
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires 
Beyond thus high." 
Why did not this palaverer, this palterer with us in a double 
sense, have the courage and truth to exclaim, in words that told 
his purpose — "My sentence is for open war!"' There by his 
side sat Moloch, the sceptered Anarchist, "the strongest and 
the fiercest spirit of all;" why not boldly launch his hidden 
thunderbolt, and cry — "Turn loose the dogs of war?" 

"Secession is the very essence of Anarchy!" The Southern 
States have committed that first act of Anarchy. The Consti- 
tution and the laws denounce it. I am here to enforce the laws. 
I intend to take and hold the forts the anarchists now hold. I 
intend to enforce the laws in the States occupied by the anar- 
chists, and to collect therein duties and customs. If the anar- 
chists keep quiet while I march with an army to enforce the 
laws, there will be no invasion — there will be no bloodshed. 

Such was the blindness of a people given over to believe a 
lie — such their rage from fear of losing the wealth wrung from 
the South by "Protection" — such the depth of sordidness and 
selfishness to which avarice had plunged that people — such the 
barbarity that had smothered humanity and filled their hearts 
with wormwood and gall — that that declaration of war in 
Pecksniff's protestation of love and benevolence, was applauded 
to the very echo as the outpouring of a great heart almost 
bursting with sorrow and compassion. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

LINCOLN BECOMES A USURPER AND 

INAUGURATES WAR. 

Horace Greeley, in his select collection of calumnies and 
lies called "The American Conflict," said that Lincoln con- 
sidered his Inaugural "as a resistless proffering of the olive- 
branch to the South." Logan, in his mausoleum, puts Lincoln 
to tossing sleepless on his bed that night, wondering how his 
"Inaugural offering the olive-branch would be received by the 
wayward, wilful, passionate South." 

If a neighbor from whom Lincoln had stolen systematically 
for years, had moved away to save what he had left and to live 
in peace, and Lincoln had followed and told him "if you don't 
move back so I can continue to steal from you, I'll go to your 
home and drag you back, but I will not kill you, unless you 
resist," that tyrant would call his threat an offering of the 
olive-branch of peace. The two Secretaries of War and Navy 
set to work vigorously the day they were appointed to get 
soldiers and ships ready to convey to the South their master's 
"olive-branch of peace." 

On the 12th day of March — eight days after the olive- 
branch had been proffered to the Confederate States — Martin 
J. Crawford, of Georgia, and John Forsyth, of Alabama, two 
of the Commissioners sent by the Confederate States Govern- 
ment bearing authority to make an agreement with the 
National Government looking to an amicable settlement of all 
National questions between the two governments, were in 
Washington. They addressed a note to Seward, Sec* 
reta^y of State, requesting him to see Lincoln and to ask 
what time it would be agreeable to him to give them an inter- 
view to talk over the business of their mission. On March 
15th, under instructions of Lincoln, the Anarchist sent to the 
Confederate Commissioners the following as a finality. En- 
closing Lincoln's Inaugural in which he declared his purpose 
to invade the Southern States "to enforce the laws," the 
Anarchist wrote — as if talking to the air: 

"A simple reference to the Inaugural will satisfy those 
gentlemen" (not even mentioning their names) "that the Secre- 



314 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

tary of State, guided by the principles therein announced, is 
prevented altogether from admitting or assuming that the 
States referred to by them, have, in law or in fact, withdrawn 
from the Federal Union, or that they could do so in the manner 
described by Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford, or in any other 
manner than with the consent and concert of the People of the 
United States, to be given through a National Convention to be 
assembled in conformity with the provisions of the Constitution 
of the United States. Of course the Secretary of State cannot 
act on the assumption, or in any way admit, that the so-called 
Confederate States constitute a Foreign Power, with whom 
diplomatic relations ought to be established." 

To this slap in the face and kick down the steps by Lincoln's 
head Anarchist, Forsyth and Crawford, and A. B. Roman, their 
associate commissioner, replied on the 9th of April. I quote the 
most important part of the reply: 

"The truth of history requires that it should distinctly 
appear upon the record that the undersigned did not ask the 
Government of the United States to recognize the independence 
of the Confederate States. They only asked audience to 
adjust, in a spirit of amity and peace, the new relations spring- 
ing from a manifest and accomplished revolution in the Gov- 
ernment of the late Federal Union. Your refusal to entertain 
those overturns for a peaceful solution; the active naval and 
military preparation of this Government and a formal notice to 
the Commanding General of the Confederate forces in the 
harbor of Charleston that the President intends to provision 
Fort Sumter by forcible means, if necessary, are viewed by the 
undersigned, and can only be received by the world, as a 
declaration of war against the Confederate States, for the 
President of the United States knows that Fort Sumter cannot 
be provisioned without the effusion of blood. The under- 
signed, in behalf of their Government and people, accept 
the gage of battle thus thrown down to them; and, appeal- 
ing to God and the judgment of mankind for the righteousness 
of their cause, the people of the Confederate States will defend 
their liberties to the last against this flagrant and open attempt 
at their subjugation to sectional power." 

I do not purpose to give even a sketch of what followed the 
supercilious treatment by Lincoln an^ his chief Anarchist of 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 315 

those messengers bearing the true olive-branch. That bloody 
field is not within my purview. I am giving the other side of 
the North's martyred saint. I charge to him the responsibility 
for the destruction of the Hepublic founded in 1787, and the 
rise on its ruins of a despotism. He was America's first despot, 
but he will not be the only and the last. To this view a sep- 
arate chapter will be devoted. 

By nature Lincoln was a gawk and a boor. His chief delight 
flowed from dirty stories. In the crude West when he was 
growing up, as in all pioneer society, chastity of speech was 
not popular. Lincoln's vulgarity and quick perception of in- 
congruities made him a welcome addition to circles where such 
stories were retailed and enjoyed. Judges delighted in doffing 
judicial dignity — such as it was in theory — and to listen to 
the erstwhile rail-splitter and boatman. He was strong before 
juries because he seasoned and spiced argument with anecdote. 
Thus he rose in popularity, and in 1836 was sent to .the Legis- 
lature. That taste of brief authority stimulated ambition to 
go higher. Li 1847 he was elected to the House of Congress. 
There he saw the giants of the Eepublic — rubbed against them 
— measured them — and vanity persuaded him he was at least 
their equal. There, too, he became engulfed in sectional parti- 
sanship, and as he "always hated slavery," his hatred en- 
veloped the master with the slave. His desire to free the slaves 
took fire and blazed into a consuming ambition. His aspira- 
tion seized on the Senate, and he made the run with Douglas 
in 1858. Events came and went rapidly. The compromise of 
1850 intensified his negrophilism ; the sectional warfare in 
"Bleeding Kansas" fired his heart. JoKn Brown's raid into 
Virginia inspired his Party with hope and new energy, and 
Lincoln mounted the popular wave and, to the surprise of him- 
self and the Abolitionists, he rode into the haven he had long 
steered his craft to reach. Ignorant of the Law of Nations and 
desirous to display his knowledge of the Constitution, he 
tracked behind Webster in his exposition in his debates with 
Hayne and Calhoun, and composed the Inaugural in which, 
"like the scurvy politician, he saw things that were not." He 
saw States stripped of sovereignty, and that sovereignty in his 
hands as President of a Nation. And thus deluded he deter- 



816 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

mined to make himself immortal as the Emancipator of four 
million negro slaves. 

Lincoln knew the spirit of the South. He knew how the 
Puritans had, for fifty years, irritated its people by theft of 
slaves and inciting them to insurrection. He knew the people 
would never again brook interference with their domestic af- 
fairs, and he knew that when he contemptuously insulted the 
South by refusing to even speak to her peace Commissioners, 
he had dared the South to mortal combat. But, bent on freeing 
the slaves, and knowing that the mob of Abolitionists at his 
back would demand of him to do what they elected him to do, 
or, on failure to obey, he would fall a victim to their rage, he 
prepared for war. Let us follow him to catch a glimpse of the 
man as the real Lincoln flashed out now and then during the 
four years of torment that racked his soul. It is safe to say 
that from the first battle of Bull Run to the surrender of Gen- 
eral Lee, Lincoln, of all men in America, was the most miserable 
— as he deserved to be. But more of that later on. To free 
the slaves was Lincoln 's primary purpose, but he knew he could 
not rally the North on that issue! He, therefore, raised the 
cry— "SAVE THE UNION!" "The flag has been fired on!" 
"Rally around it to Save the Union!" On the 15th of April, 
just six weeks after he as President swore to support the Con- 
stitution, he made a call on the Governors of all the States to 
send to him 75,000 soldiers. For what? He had declared in 
his Inaugural he would only enforce the laws "to collect duties 
and customs" in the seceded States. Did he need 75,000 armed 
men to do that? Had he tried to collect any duties and customs 
in the seceded States and failed because he had been resisted 
by armed force ? He had not made an attempt. 

But more and worse. He said "Secession was anarchy" — 
that the people of the South had violated the Constitution, and 
he intended to uphold it — to preserve it. That bond of the 
Union says Congress alone has power "to raise and support 
armies." Congress bad not voted to raise an army. There was 
no Congress for four months after he wa^ inaugurated, and 
would not have been until the first Monday in December, 
1861, if he had not called an extra session. There was no 
appropriation to support 75,000, or even ten, soldiers. He 
had no more authority to raise an army than he had when he 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 317 

was a boat hand. Why did he not convene the Members elect 
the day after "the flag had been fired on," and let Congress 
Bay what should be done? Why did he delay calling Congress 
in extra session until July 4th? Why arm and equip 75,000 
troops — drill them — send them into Virginia and command 
them to march on Richmond before Congress met? Only 17 
days passed after Congress convened before the battle of Bull 
Run. He had invaded Virginia in May. Ah! the wily fox! 
with an Anarchist his chief adviser. He would not trust Con- 
gress. ** The Northern heart must be fired!" * 'I intend to free 
the negroes. I must foment a situation to prevent Congress 
from attempting any more compromises such as were proposed 
only four days before I was inaugurated." 

Logan, in his mausoleum — "The Great Conspiracy" — says: 
"By the end of May not only had the ranks of the regular 
Union army been filled and largely added to, but 42,000 addi- 
tional volunteers had been called out by President Lincoln. 
The Southern ports had been blockaded. Washington City, and 
its suburbs, had, during May, become a vast armed camp ; the 
Potomac River had been crossed, and the Virginia hills, includ- 
ing Arlington Heights, had been occupied and fortified by 
Union troops; the young and gallant Col. Ellsworth had been 
killed by a Virginia Rebel while pulling down a Rebel flag in 
Alexandria, and Gen, Benjamin F. Butler was in command of 
Fortress Monroe, and had, by an inspiration, solved one of the 
knottiest points confronting our armies — that is, Butler had 
confiscated as property escaped slaves within his lines, as ' con- 
traband of war.' " Here is testimony from one of Lincoln's 
adorers, to prove what he had done without authority of Con- 
gress, 01* of the Constitution. Logan's evidence was not 
necessary. He only recited history "known of all men." But 
Logan was no lawyer. He did not, could not, see he was con- 
demning to infamy his idol. He probably knew that a King, 
a Monarch, or other Ruler, who seizes power beyond his lawful 
reach, is a Usurper, and a Usurper is a tyrant. Every student 
of the federal Constitution knows that the President has noth- 
ing to do with declaring war. He is commander-in-chief of the 
army and navy, and when war is declared, he takes command. 

Yes, Lincoln intended to have war begun. He must move 
as the fanatics demanded, so that, when Congress should organ- 



318 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

ize, lie could say in substance — "I started into Virginia to exe- 
cute the laws you made ; to collect the revenue and customs at 
Norfolk, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, 
Mobile, New Orleans and Galveston, and I was met by thou- 
sands of Rebels and Anarchists, and they told me not to come. 
So I called for a posse comitatus of 117,000 men to make sure 
my mission. I armed and drilled them and organized them into 
battalions, regiments, brigades and corps, and they are now 
ready to attack the anarchists. What are you going to do 
about it? Will you like cowards back out, and leave those 
brave men at the mercy of these anarchists? Will you have 
Washington taken and burnt?" Lincoln knew he had usurped 
a power of Congress, and that he was a Usurper. He may not 
have branded himself a tyrant, but that is what the law defines 
a Usurper to be. But he and his Anarchist-adviser knew that 
the course he took was the only way to insure civil war, and, if 
successful, to free the negroes. Lincoln's ambition was to be 
the Great Emancipator. Seward's was to get revenge on the 
South — its men ,and women — and to destroy their refined civili- 
zation that rebuffed him in Georgia. 

After the cry, "On to Richmond," had rung through the 
North a year from the rout of Lincoln 's posse comitatus at Bull 
Run, Lincoln "saw another sight." His devotion to the negro 
had been chilled by the horrors of the battle-field. That blood 
was on his hands. He had usurped the war power of Congress 
and precipitated a gigantic struggle, to which hp wns not equal 
in his Generals or his troops. He was bombarded from Maine 
to Oregon. Hope did not elevate nor "joy brighten his crest." 
Mothers whose sons had been killed and left on the battle-field 
to be clawed by carrion crows and gnawed by wori!ns were 
raising the cry of Niobe widows — their husbands dead and 
homes desolated — were shrieking sleep from the Usurper's pil- 
low. Editors were cursing him. Horace Greeley in August, 
1862, madly assaulted him in the Tribune, and had it placed 
under his nose. In brief, the Great Emancipator found his 
negro pet too heavy and dropped him. The sole agonizing cry 
was — "Save the Union!" 

In proof of his desertion of the slaves, I quote his own words. 
The negroes who for a half century have had the same Lincoln 
rabies his white Northern worshipers have, and been parading 



TRUE VINDICATION 0¥ THE SOUTH 319 

streets in all Southern cities and towns on "Emancipation 
Day," should remember these words. In answer to Greeley's 
attack Lincoln replied by letter, August 22nd, 1862, and among 
other things, said : *'If I could save the Union without freeing 
any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some 
and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do 
about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it 
helps to save the Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because 
I do not believe it would help to save the Union." It thus ap- 
pears by his own confession that Lincoln did not care whether 
the negroes were set free or kept in slavery. If the Union 
could be saved by freeing the slaves he would try to free them. 
If the Union could not be saved if the slaves were freed, he 
said, "I am willing that they shall be held in slavery." This 
letter to Greeley is on Page 433-434 of Logan's book — ''The 
Great Conspiracy." This is the world's greatest philanthropist 
— according to the verdict of the worshipers of the twin heroes 
— Lincoln and John Brown. 

We have now to consider another phase of this immortal 
mortal. The English language has ben ransacked for superla- 
tives, and the superlatives have been stretched into super- 
superlatives by windbroken orators, and by a procession as 
long as the issue of Banquo, of neophyte historians, to raise 
Lincoln to a height just below the angels in praise of his 
gentleness, charity, and humanity. Again I prefer Lincoln as 
a witness to what was in his heart, to all these interminable 
strings hanging to his coat-tail to gain fame by reflection, or 
even to those semi-judicious among the blind pagan idolaters, 
who through a rift of the darkness can see a spot on the 
burning surface of this last sun "risen on mid-noon." 

On September 13, 1862, a deputation from all religious de- 
nominations of Chicago presented to Lincoln a Memorial for 
the immediate issue by him of a proclamation of Emancipation 
of all the slaves in the South. He made a long verbose speech 
in which this language was used : 

"I do not want to issue a document that the whole world 
will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull 
against the Comet. Now tell me, if you please, what possible 
result of good would follow the issuing of such a Proclamation 



320 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

as you desire? Understand, I raise no objection to it on 
legal or Constitutional ground, for, as Commander-in-Chief of 
the Army and Navy, in time of war, I suppose I have a right to 
take any measure which may best subdue the enemy ; NOR DO 
I URGE OBJECTIONS OF A MORAL NATURE IN VIEW OP 
THE POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES OP INSURRECTION 
AND MASSACRE AT THE SOUTH. I view this matter as a 
practical war measure, to be decided on according to the 
advantage or disadvantage it may offer for the suppression 
of the Rebellion!" 

We have long heard of the Devil's cloven foot, but not 
before have we seen it. Humanity! cry his worshippers! 
Humanity! The hanging of Quakers for a nonessential diff- 
erence of opinion was, indeed, humane compared to the savag- 
ery of the heart that harbored that fiendish hate. The mouth 
of the adder is joy to its victim beside this inhuman tongue. 
No cieeping thing that on its belly crawls has God endowed 
with less compassion than had this simular of virtue. The 
massacre of the Huguenots was riiercy to the fate this monster 
planned for the South. The savage baffled in warfare to con- 
quer his enemy on the field, who sneaks at dead of night, and 
fires the prairie and burns what he cannot subdue, is a bene- 
factor compared to the paleface who, beaten on the field, de- 
termines to have the wives and daughters of his foes raped 
by savages, and, then, men, women and babes butchered in 
their burning homes! Is this a "rebel's" — an "anarchist's" — 
a traitor's" vituperation of a hero, a patroit, a saint? Let 
Lincoln answer the charge. It must stand or fall by his own 
words. 

A short notice of the alarming situation Lincoln had made 
by violating his oath and usurping the war power of Congress, 
will link his name with Pope Innocent III, with the Duke of 
Alva and the St. Domingo Massacre, whenever it is read or 
spoken among civilized people of coming ages. We have seen 
that he usurped the power to make war and to raise armies 
and rushed to immortalize his name. The battle of Bull Run 
stunned him. In every important battle from that day (July 
21, 1861) to the issue of his Pope's Bull — Emancipation Proc- 
lamation — defeat after defeat staggered and bewildered him. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 321 

He began early in 1862 to pray for help. He was pelted with 
the vilest epithets by his own dupes, and was dodging and 
pleading for relief. After cudgeling his brain for months, he 
hit on the expedient of Emancipation. He knew he had no 
power as President to touch slavery. He had so declared. But 
he believed that a Proclamation of Freedom to all slaves within 
the Confederate States would arouse the slaves to insurrection 
and massacre, and, if they once rose up and began to burn, 
rape and kill, the Confederate soldiers would, in defiance of 
all military rules, orders and commands, rush to their homes 
and protect their wives, children and property ; that desertion 
would paralyze the Confederate Government, and his march 
to conquest would be a holiday parade. 

Had he considered the consequence of insurrection and 
massacre he believed his Proclamation would inevitably pro- 
duce? He is the best witness. Let him speak. I said he 
had contemplated this fiendish measure for months. Replying to 
the Chicago preachers (as quoted above, Sept. 13, 1862), his 
opening sentence is this: "The subject presented in the 
Memorial is one upon which I have thought much for weeks 
past, and I may even say for months." He then, after a speech 
covering two pages, said, as quoted above: "Understand, I 
raise no objections against it (the Proclamation) on legal or 
Constitutional grounds, for, as Commander-in-chief of the Army 
and Navy, in time of war, I suppose I have the right to take* 
any measure which may best subdue the enemy, NOR DO I 
URGE OBJECTIONS OP A MORAL NATURE IN VIEW OF 
POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF ISSURRECTION AND 
MASSACRE AT THE SOUTH." 

Cffisar had his Brutus ! Charles the First his Cromwell, and 
Abraham Lincoln his John Wilkes Booth ! 

In his Inaugural, March 4th, 1861, after branding the seces- 
sionists as anarchists; after proclaiming that there would be 
no invasion of the South ; that he only intended to collect duties 
and customs, and to occupy federal property, he, in conclusion, 
said: "I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. 
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, 
it must not break our bonds of affection." This is a leaf from 
the "olive-branch of peace" — so like the Mohammedan's "take 



322 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

the Koran, or I will take your life." "Desert your colors! 
Break up your government by anarchists ! Go to your homes ! 
Hold State Conventions and abolish slavery — that 'worst 
tyranny and despotism in the world' — and we will be friends 
I am your President and Ruler!" This was the voice of 
Peace ! 

Douglas, in the joint debates, charged Lincoln with trickery 
— with deceit — in making a speech in Northern Illinois to catch 
Democrats. Here he played the role of hypocrite. He was 
playing to the galleries and to the audience of Europe. He 
had lived through the entire period of slavery agitation — knew 
the Puritans began it — had seen it grow like a prarie on fire — 
knew that fanatics started it and would never stop perscution 
of the South until slavery was abolished and that Secession 
was the only escape from that persecution. Yet, he seized on 
the word ** passion" to fix blame on the South — to make it 
appear that the North was so innocent of wrong-doing as to be 
amazed at Secession — so astounded as to see nothing but an- 
archy as the motive. That he knew was dishonest, deceitful 
and false. This view of Lincoln is fully presented in the chap- 
ter on Secession. 



CHAPTER XLV. 

LINCOLN ON "UNIVERSAL LAW" AND 

THE "PERPETUITY" OF THE UNION. 

In his inaugural address Mr. Lincoln said : * * I hold that, in 
contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the 
Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity, implied, if not 
expressed, is the fundamental law of all National Govern- 
ments. It is safe to say that no Government proper ever had 
a provision in its organic law for its own termination." 

What ''Universal Law" is, Lincoln did not tell us. It might 
have aided the public to understand what he was talking about. 
If he meant law of the Universe, he should have included in his 
Inaugural a cyclopedia of the laws that control every thing in 
and out of the Universe, This suggestion assumes that he could 
produce a cyclopedia to which the thousand scientists who 
have advocated different theories, had finally agreed. If he 
had not soared so lofty, and had used plain common-sense lan- 
guage, and had said, even standing tip-toe: "I hold that there 
are a few laws that are recognized by the wisest men as uni- 
versal, and I give as an instance the law that every nation, and 
State, is sovereign, free and independent, and perpetual," he 
could, then, have announced that, this being a universal law, 
must be a "fundamental law" of all Nations, and our National 
Government being a Nation, as he assumed, therefore ' ' it nec- 
essarily and logically follows that our National government is 
sovereign, free, independent and perpetual." There was not 
an Abolitionist, Nationalist, or Puritan fanatic, among the 
"thirty thousand" hearers (John A. Logan's figures) who 
would not have applauded him three times. The syllogism, or 
sillygism, would have been overwhelming but for one little trifle 
which logicians have classed among beggars by calling it "beg- 
ging the question" — to-wit: "Our National Government being 
a Nation." It is a pity that a little thing like that should be 
allowed to spoil such a magnificent cerebral structure, and it 
built, too, by the greatest man (up North) of all the ages. 



324 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

We have here the sophism on which all Nationalists defend 
that brutal, lawless war — to-wit : that * ' the federal government 
was a Nation" and was in authority over all the States, Web- 
ster did not so contend, but he sowed the seed that bore that 
poisonous, deadly, fruit. In the same paragraph Lincoln says : 
** Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National 
Constitution and the Union will endure forever — it being im- 
possible to destroy it, except by some action not provided for 
in the instrument itself." 

Nothing built by man can endure forever. But if the Puri- 
tan fanatics had obeyed "the express provisions of the Consti- 
tution;" had not stolen slaves — property guaranteed by the 
Constitution; had not incited the slaves to insurrection; if the 
legislators of eleven States had not committed treason by pass- 
ing statutes to defy the fugitive slave laws; had not deified 
John Brown for invading Virginia to aid slaves to murder their 
masters; and had not, otherwise, made life in the Union unen- 
durable, the eleven States would^ not have seceded, and the 
Union would have endured, perhaps, fifty years longer. 

But, says Lincoln, "the Union, by Universal Law and the 
Constitution, — is perpetual — it being impossible to destroy it ex- 
cept by some action not provided for in the instrument itself." 
Lincoln had one quality that helps any man to succeed — con- 
fidence in himself. He "speaks as one having authority." A 
man with less assurance would have omitted the word "not" 
before the word "provided." In the debate with Calhoun, 
Webster admitted that three-fourths of the States, acting by 
authority of the Constitution to amend it, might repeal it. 
Webster then proceeded to show why they would not destroy 
it — ^not to show they could not destroy it. But Lincoln was and 
is a far greater man up North than Webster; while, down 
South, although we are not quite such "traitors" as to say out 
loud — "Hyperion to a Satyr," we can not help being, in leisure* 
moments, somewhat classical in our reminiscences. Lincoln 
had not the shadow of a doubt of the perpetuity of the Union. 
He announces that the States in the Southern Confederacy were 
never out of the Union, "because it is perpetual." The South, 
after Secession, never contended that there was not a Union. 
The federal government was left intact in every Department. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 325 

The only change caused by Secession was in the number of 
States. In that view, Lincoln's assertion of perpetuity is cor- 
rect — that is, in theory. To prove that the Union is perpetual 
he calls down from the stand his veiled, nebulous, amorphous 
witness, ** Universal Law," and as he found his second witness, 
"the Constitution" — whose statement no man would doubt — 
was deaf and dumb, he introduced four other "reliable" wit- 
nesses whose age alone evoked veneration, but who (except the 
last) were not present when the Constitution was made, and 
knew nothing about it. The first is "The Articles of Associa- 
tion" (1774) ; the second was "The Declaration of Independ- 
ence" (1776) ; the third was "The Articles of Confederation" 
(1777) ; and the fourth the Preamble to the Constitution — 
"Webster's main witness in 1833. The last should have been 
ruled out on the ground of being a "professional witness" — 
always on the side of despotism. I quote Lincoln's own words : 

"Descending from these general principles, we find the 
proposition that, in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual, 
confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is 
much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by 
the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and con- 
tinued in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was 
further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States 
expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by 
the Articles of Confederation, in 1777; and, finally, in 1787, 
one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the 
Constitution was 'to form a more perfect Union.' But if de- 
struction of the Union by one, or by a part only, of the States, 
be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before, the 
Constitution having lost the vital element of perpetuity. It fol- 
lows, from these views, that no State, upon its own mere 
motion, can lawfully get out of the Union; that Resolves and 
Ordinances to that effect, ,are legally void; and that acts of 
violence within any State, or States, against the authority of 
the United States, are insurrectionary, or revolutionary, accord- 
ing to circumstances." 

To discuss seriously these "propositions" of Lincoln sug- 
gests criticism of the action of country boys riding corn-stalk 
horses around the ring after the circus is gone, or of a novice, 
who, while lecturing, experiments with hydrogen and oxygen 



32 6 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

to show how they make a union, and gets his head blown off. 
But to business : The Articles of Association made by the col- 
onies in 1774 make one of the four links in Lincoln's chain of 
evidence to prove that the Union of the thirteen States — sov- 
ereigns each and all — is perpetual, — cannot lawfully be broken 
up or dissolved for any reason or cause, except by unanimous 
agreement of all the States. "Therefore" if twelve States in 
1789 had agreed to tear up the Constitution, and Rhode Island 
had said "No;" little Rhode Island would have been Empress 
of the United States. 

Lincoln says : ' ' The Union was matured and continued in the 
Declaration of Independence in 1776." If the Union was "ma- 
tured" why did those meddling numskulls, Washington, Ham- 
ilton, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and others, keep on tinkering 
at it — fooling with it — especially as they had continued it 
"forever" after its "maturity?" Could not those old pundits 
tell the difference between the egg they had been "setting on" 
for two years and the chick after it was hatched? Why did 
they continue to "set" from 1776 to 1787? What a pity that 
Lincoln was born too late. Had he come sailing along in 1778 
loaded to the gunwales with his universal knowledge of "Uni- 
versal Law," he would have told those fool "setters" to get 
off the nest, or they'd "set" themselves to death — as the 
chicken had been hatched two years ago and harl h^<^n in busi- 
ness at least a year. 

It is in order to cross examine these two witnesses, as Lincoln 
does not let us know what they testify. He made an ex parte 
—"within chambers" — examination, and then takes the stand 
and testified to what he understood his witnesses to say. In 
other wordS; he acts as examiner and then "enters up judg- 
ment," and on that decision he proceeded to shoot down a half 
million American citizens — sparing neither age nor sex. It 
must be borne in mind that we now enter upon an examination 
of the law established by and binding on the thirteen States 
when they formed the Union. I have quoted from Lincoln's 
Inaugural his entire argument to prove the States intended the 
Union to be "perpetual" — "exist forever — and, therefore, no 
State can secede." From that fact (perpetuity) he deduces 



T RUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 327 

a number of corollaries which, in his judgment, necessarily 
follow, such as: — 

First : ** Plainly, the central idea of Secession is the essence 
of anarchy." "I therefore consider, in view of the Constitu- 
tion and the laws, that the Union is unbroken," — all which 
have no probative value on the main question, because they are 
only sound after the fundamental question of perpetuity shall 
have been settled beyond any doubt. Should he fail to establish , 
his first proposition, then another corollary not among his must 
follow, and that is — he must lie "forever" in the tomb, con- 
structed by History, with Tamerlane, Genghis Kahn, Julius 
Caesar, and the Duke of Alva. 

Second: *'The caption of the Declaration of Independence 
is evidence, if not proof, of the perpetuity of the Union !" The 
Declaration was made "by the Representatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assembled," July 4th, 1776. After 
a few words preliminary, it says: "We hold these truths to 
be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are 
endowed by their creator with certain inalienable Rights; 
that among these (rights) are life, Liberty and the pursuit 
of Happiness." Do these truths tend to prove perpetuity of 
the Union? Admit that the caption above be true — that the 
States were then united and were in a Congress assembled — 
does it prove that there was a perpetual Union between the 
States? The writing that united the States is the best and, 
indeed, the only evidence of what they agreed on. That 
writing Lincoln does not produce. But, so far, the Declaration 
is a bad witness for Lincoln, who, as plaintiff, must prove his 
case. The quotation — "We hold these truths," et cetera, states 
exactly the inalienable rights of every human being in a state 
of nature, and of the hundred or more writers declaring what 
are the Laws of Nations, every one, without variance of a 
word, declares that the Law of Nations is founded on the law 
of Nature, and that every Nation is sovereign, free and inde- 
pendent; that among their rights are "life, liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness ; ' * that every State is a complete Nation ; 
their powers, rights, privileges and immunities are "inalien- 
able, immutable and indivisible." So that, even if the caption 
is proof of a Union of the States, it was a Union of sovereign, 



338 TRUE VINDICATION OE THE SOUTH 

free and independent, each vested before the Union with 
powers, rights, privileges and immunities ** inalienable, immut- 
able and indivisible." Lincoln ought to have "coached" that 
witness before he put it on the stand, or, rather, he should not 
have examined his witness behind a door, in the dark, then 
told it to go so far a subpoena could not reach it, and then 
have come into court and testified as true what his witness 
refused to say! 

One of Lincoln 's proofs of perpetuity of the Union is this : 
"It is safe to assert that no Government proper ever had a 
provision in its organic law for its own termination." Here 
is a jumble of words and a juggle with words such as Web- 
ster used when speaking of the Constitution and the govern- 
ment, the States and the Union, as convertible terms. "No 
Government proper" * * * "in its organic law." What 
does he mean? In one sense he is correct, in another he is 
trying "to fool all the people all the time." If he speaks of 
the federal government (and evidently he does) he names one 
that is not a "government proper;" he assumes as true the 
thing he is trying to prove. In 1789 it was appointed the rep- 
resentative, the agent, of thirteen Governments proper, or sov- 
ereign States. If he had declared that no State, no Nation, 
ever provided for its termination, he would have told the truth. 
For no Sovereign, such as is a State, or Nation, was ever 
organized with a view to its own destruction, late or soon. 
To avoid description of a State or Nation he substituted ' * gov- 
ernment proper" (borrowed from Webster) "to fool all the 
people," and applied that phrase to the federal government 
which was organized under the Constitution — that "organic 
law" which provides in express terms that three-fourths of the 
States can amend (not alone as Taft would amend or revise 
the tariff law by piling on), but by adding to, taking from, 
or even withdrawing from its agent all powers "delegated" 
to it by its written authority to act for its principals — the 
sovereign States. 

We continue the cross-examination of the hearsay evidence 
of the witness that Lincoln swore to as true. The remainder 
of the Declaration, down to the last paragraph, is an indict- 
ment containing about fifty counts against King George III. In 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 329 

conclusion it reads : * * The Representatives of the United States 
of America in General Congress assembled * * * by au- 
thority of the good people of these Colonies solemnly publish 
and declare that these United Colonies (not States) are and 
of right ought to be free and independent States * * * ; 
and that as free and independent States they have full power 
to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish com- 
merce, and to do all other acts and things which independent 
States may of right do." 

This witness gets worse. It did not hear Lincoln's hear- 
say testimony. It blurts out, without any respect for the Abo- 
litionists/ President, and calls his United States "United Colo- 
nies" — and says they are and ought to be free and independent 
States, and that they have full power — as United States? 
No; but as independent States, to levy war, conclude peace, 
contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts 
and things which independent States may of right do. This 
document was intended to be what it is called — a Declaration 
of Independence of Great Britain, but it testifies to facts that 
explode Lincoln's ** Union that is much older than the Consti- 
tution." First, that United Colonies made that Declaration. 
There were no States in a Union ! or those Representatives did 
not know it. The "Caption" that reads "United States" is 
no part of the Declaration. Webster tried to make the pre- 
amble a part of the Constitution, when he fled and took sanc- 
tuary in the preamble to escape the blows Calhoun showered 
on his head with the Law of Nations. Lincoln here attempts 
the same trick. Both failed, and yet both "fooled the people." 
Webster, unintentionally, raised a mob made up of Abolition- 
ists, Freiesoilers, negro-thieves, fanatics, sans-culottes ; men 
with rabies — caused by even the mention of "Constitution," 
and unsexed women, — which Lincoln in 1860 led to victory at 
the polls, and to destruction of the Republic by war. 

A few words more on the Declaration as evidence of "The 
Union older than the Constitution." It says, — "and to do all 
other acts and things which Free and Independent States can 
of right do." Was that said of States united under a compact? 
No! It means that "each State, as a Nation "can of right do." 
Under the Constitution, each State has delegated to its com- 



330 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

mon agent the exercise of its natural right "to levy War, con- 
elude Peace, contract Alliances, and establish Commerce," but 
these acts are a small part of ''all the acts" and things a State 
or Nation can do, and not one of which can the States united 
do. A State holds the franchise, regulates the conduct of citi- 
zens, marriage, divorce, adjudicates titles to land, establishes 
police regulations, schools, municipalities, and a thousand other 
acts vfhich the United States cannot do. It is clear that the 
words, "and to do all other acts and things which Independent 
States can of right do," were spoken of a sovereign untram- 
meled by alliance in any form with one or more other sover- 
eigns. Thus, the Declaration, when given free speech and 
allowed to speak for itself, turns against the party who per- 
verted its meaning, and gives positive evidence against "the 
Union older than the Constitution." 

The third witness is "The Articles of Confederation in 
1778." If Lincoln had started with these Articles as Webster 
did, instead of harking back to 1774 for "the Association," 
and to 1776 for the Declaration of Independence, his case 
would not be so utterly bottomless. For those Articles of 
Confederation say the Union established by them "shall be 
perpetual." But Article I call the Union a confederation, and 
Article II is as follows: "Each State retains its sovereignty, 
freedom and independence; and every power, jurisdiction, 
and right which is not by this confederation expressly dele- 
gated to the United States in Congress assembled." Note the 
fact that a Congress of delegates was to exercise all the powers 
delegated. There was no President — ^no Senate — no Judiciary 
provided for. The fourth witness is : "To form a more perfect 
Union." One said it should be perpetual. The Constitution 
omits that. One said no alterations could be made unless all 
the legislatures agreed, etc., etc. 

Article III reads: "The said States (still colonies) hereby 
severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other 
for their common defense, the security of their liberties * * • 
binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered 
• * * on account of religion, sovereignty, trade," etc. 

Article V "For the more convenient management of the 
general interests of the United States, delegates shall be an- 
nually appointed by each State every year, with a power re- 



.TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 331 

served to each State to recall its delegates, or any of them, 
at any time within the year, and to send others in their stead 
for the remainder of the year." Here is the modem doctrine 
of "Recall"— 134 years ago. 

Article XIII, referring to all the Articles, reads: "Nor 
shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of 
them unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the 
United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures 
of every State." 

This evidence is to show, first, that the colonies formed a 
Confederation and styled it "The United States of America" 
(Article I) ; second, that they said the confederacy should be 
perpetual; third, that each State remained sovereign, free and 
independent (Article II) ; fourth, that the confederacy was 
only "a league of friendship" (Article III). The delegates 
intended this agreement to continue forever — as they say "per- 
petual" four times. Of what probative value is this evidence 
to establish the two propositions that "The Union of 1787 is 
much older than the Constitution, and is perpetual?" 

Lincoln asserts that there were three Unions before The 
Union — (the Declaration of Independence being one Union) 
and, therefore, they must be a part of, or links in, a chain that 
ends in the Union of 1787, and as one (the Confederation) con- 
tains the word "perpetual," therefore, the last link in the chain 
forged in 1787 (The Union) must be perpetual. 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

LINCOLN'S LEARNING AS A LAWYER 

TESTED— HIS CONTRADICTORY 

POSITIONS. 

Lincoln's admirers — indeed, worshipers — ^proclaim that he 
was a great lawyer, and, as a statesman — a perfect wonder. If 
he was, he knew all the rules that every court in England has 
held to be inviolable when used in construing instruments in 
writing of every kind, ranging from commercial contracts, 
deeds, wills, conventions, compacts, up to treaties. If he was a 
great lawyer he knew ''the Law of Nations," and, of course, 
the powers, exemptions, rights, etc., of a Sovereign. If he was 
not a passably good lawyer, we can understand why he as- 
serted the two propositions quoted in the preceding chapter, 
to be true. If he was, however, a great lawyer, he was not 
sincere, not honest in an assertion that is denied by the uniform 
decisions of all courts in England for a thousand years, and 
by every American court since 1800, and by "the Law of 
Nations." Let us test his learning — to decide whether he knew 
the plainest rules for construing written instruments, and we 
can then judge whether he was a great lawyer, or, like Web- 
ster, had silenced conscience to play traitor to Truth. Wor- 
shipers may adore, sycophants may flatter, scribblers may seek 
honor and glory by basting their names to his — all may rank 
him above Augustine, Marcus Aurelius, Washington and Jef- 
ferson, but they cannot by vain words smother the light of 
Truth — for "the eternal years of God are hers." 

If Lincoln was asserting that the Union of 1787 was older 
than the Constitution because one, or two, or more Unions had 
preceded it, he was asserting that which would upset and re- 
verse all rules for construing not only all legal documents but 
all writings of every kind. If he used the historical fact that 
two Unions had been formed before the Union of 1787, to prove 
that the last Union was and is perpetual, because that word is 
in the first and not in the second of the two preceding Unions, 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 833 

he was either ignorant of not only the civil law but of the Law 
of Nations, or he was dishonest to the length of playing his 
ambition and safety against the life of the Republic. Let us 
assume he was honest, and test his knowledge of law. 

Chief Justice Eyre, in the great case of Marryatt v. Wilson, 
having before him the treaty between England and the United 
States, which he had to construe, stated the rules to be applied 
in these words : ' ' We are to construe this treaty as we would 
construe any other instrument, public or private; we are 
to collect from the nature of the subject, from the words 
and the context, the true intent and meaning of the contract- 
ing parties, whether they be A and B or happen to be two 
independent States." See 1st Bosanguet and Puller, pages 
436-439; also the United States vs. Arredondo et al, 6 Peters' 
S. C. Rep. 610. These decisions announced no new law. It 
was then venerable from age, and it was in and controling the 
thirteen colonies, and was law in 1787, and was law when 
Lincoln reached out over the Universe and dragged in that 
nebulous "Universal Law," and the Declaration of Independ- 
ence and the "Articles of Association" and of the "Confeder- 
ation," to find what the Constitution means. 

One of the "perpetual" rules is, that any writing that 
contains no ambiguous word, phrase, or sentence, must be con- 
strued by its own language. In terms of the law — "it speaks 
for itself, and no other shall speak for it." No man has ever 
lived who was demagogue enough to suggest any ambiguity in 
the Constitution of 1787. Another "perpetual" rule, based on 
the foregoing rule is, that no word shall be imported from any 
source to interpret any writing in which there is no ambiguity. 
Another rule is, that no Judge shall ever permit any construc- 
tion of an unambiguous writing that gives to it a meaning 
different from that clearly set forth by the parties who made 
it. Another rule is, that Courts will never change a contract, 
however burdensome it may be to one of the parties who made 
it. Another rule is, that a writing without ambiguity must be 
construed to contain no more and no less than the parties who 
made it intended to say and to be bound by. Other rules estab- 
lished by the highest authority known among men — Sovereign 
Nations and States — will be given when we take up another 
contention of Lincoln. 



it34 T RUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

The absurdity of citing the Declaration of Independence as 
one of four Unions between the States has already been shown 
in part. In 1776 the war was on. The thirteen separate col- 
onies had united their troops under Washington to conquer the 
British armies. They sought aid from France, and would ac- 
cept it from .any nation, and to get aid they decided to tell the 
world their cause was just, by stating the tyranny of Great 
Britain. After framing their indictment, they declared that 
they, therefore, * ' ought to be free ' ' and asserted that they were 
"free and independent States" — and not one State, or Nation. 
Lincoln declared that action formed a Union. Not a paragraph, 
or line, or word, stating the terms to bind them — not the 
shadow of any form of government — nothing agreed on — noth- 
ing even proposed — but, nevertheless, Lincoln says they formed 
a Union "older than the Constitution." 

By the same logic (?) if, in his rail-splitting d9.ys, bears 
had invaded the sheepfolds and piggeries of himself and neigh- 
bors, and they had agreed to make common cause against the 
whole Bruin race; and after they had gathered together, duly 
armed with flintlocks, cob-pipes and pikes, Lincoln had mounted 
a stump, or rail-pile, and proceeded to indict the entire Bruin 
nation, including all cubs, and had set out in forty counts the 
barbarities, tike cruelties, the lawlessness, the injustice, of their 
neighbors in the swamps, who sneak forth at dead of night, 
"when slumber's chain had bound him," and against all civil- 
ized warfare, and against "Universal Law" and the Laws of 
Nations, had chawed up his fattest pigs and his innocent lambs, 
including Mary's; had turned over the wash-tub and splashed 
soap-suds in Towser's one eye, and put him out of the fight, had 
made a Rump-Parliament of old Brindle by biting off her tail, 
and the neighbors had then Resolved that they had the right 
to be free men and by the holy Hocus-Pocus they were free and 
independent sovereigns — right there and then one of Lincoln's 
perpetual Unions would have been formed. 

Because the words "the Union shall be perpetual" are in 
the "Confederation," Lincoln draws the conclusion that the 
Union of 1787 is perpetual. To get this end he over-rides two 
of the plainest and orthodox rules for construing all writings. 
He selects one word from a former contract between the same 
parties, and attempts to graft it on another contract between 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 335 

them made nine years later. This no law known to civilized 
man permits. His attempt is as odious to the Law, to con- 
science, and to all just men as is an ex post facto law — such as 
the Puritans practiced on Quakers by making laws after arrest 
to cover the offense charged. 

But, if it were possible for any rough-riding over civil law 
to be worse, he, next, surpasses that defence of law. That is, 
he attempts to incorporate a word in the contract, or compact, 
between the States, that would make the Union indissoluble 
except by successful revolution — thus adding to the contract 
another Article, or paragraph of which the States made no 
mention. Two odious vices are covered up in this insidious 
desperate effort to justify the war he intended to begin. The 
first is his attempt to make the States agree to a fact — a condi- 
tion — they omitted to mention, or hint at ; and the second is, by 
that word to change a Republic made by thirteen States, into a 
Nation — a consolidated Nation — in which the federal govern- 
ment would be the Nation, and the States would be reduced to 
dependencies, forever bound to it whatever might be its tyran- 
nies, and whatever might be the injustice and oppression, not 
^only done by the federal government, and by a combination of 
States against other States, but also by lawless citizens of cer- 
tain States to citizens of one or more other States by acts ovei 
which the head Nation at Washington could not take jurisdic- 
tion for prevention, or redress. Those wrongs that could thus 
be done and were done will be presented in the Chapter on 
Secession. 

Lincoln assumes that as the word "perpetual" was in the 
Article of Confederation four times, it was omitted from the 
Constitution by oversight of the deputies, and by the States in 
sovereign convention that adopted it. It was not possible by law 
to get that word in the Constitution in any other way. He says 
it is there by implication. If the Constitution could not be 
made effective without the word ''perpeual, " the courts might 
hold that as the Colonies were so emphatic for perpetuity as to 
say "perpetual" four times, it would not be a stretch of author- 
ity in order to save the Constitution from failure, to construe 
it as Lincoln contended. But, as the Constitution is considered 
as the nearest to perfection of all man's works, it is idle to dwell 



336 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

on the hypothesis of oversight. Still, let us see whether there 
is any possible reason to imagine that the delegates of 1787 had 
in mind the word perpetual or its equivalent. 

The Confederation was formed in 1777, during the war of 
the Revolution. There were no States. There were thirteen 
Colonies fighting for life. Technically every soldier was a 
traitor. The Colonies assumed the title of States, but they 
knew they were not — and could not be unless they whipped 
Great Britain. The pall of doubt covered the land. The 
leaders fought with ropes around their necks — Washington 
the first to hang, if defeated. He was complaining at the con- 
duct of some of the Colonies. He wanted men and money. 
There was no head — no organization. Patriotism was his 
main support. The story has been rehearsed a thousand times. 
Under that condition the Colonies sent delegates to Phila- 
delphia to form a government. They were novices at that 
work. They committed plenary power to a Congress. It was 
Executive, Legislative, and, in some respects, Judicial. Their 
work was botched, as events proved. As they were doubtful of 
the result of the war, some feared defection. The New Eng- 
land colonies were coquetting with the British — "Washington 
complained that some were trading with the enemy. Two 
counties, "Worcester and Hampshire, send deputies to Sir Guy 
Carlton, British General, to know on what terms Great Britain 
would receive them. The delegates felt much as men besieged, 
fearing that some would desert to the foe. Therefore they 
tried to bind every man to stand fast, and, hence, they said this 
agreement is " a league of friendship with each other for their 
common defense, the security of their liberties, binding them- 
selves to assist each other against all force, or attacks made 
on them, or any of them," etc. etc. And they kept saying this 
league "must be perpetual." "Why say that four times ? There 
is no other reason than trepidation. And the Colonies readily 
adopted the "league of friendship." It is needless to say, this 
league proved to be of little use to the Colonies. 

In 1787 — what a change! The Colonies had ripened into 
thirteen States — each a sovereign — as much as Great Britain. 
The league wagged along — each State attending to its own 
affairs. International complications arose. Statesmen saw 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 337 

that the league was impotent, and that another form of gov- 
ernment had to be organized, to get rid of that stupid Con- 
federation, It is a significant fact that of the delegates sent 
by the States to form a Constitution in 1787, but three of the 
forty-eight sent to form the Confederation in 1777 — only nine 
years before — were included. Why? Because new ideas of 
government had been matured. The States being sovereign 
the statesmen wanted a government founded on principles of 
sovereignty, and the State sent deputies to Philadelphia who 
knew the Law that governs Nations, and, of course, the powers, 
rights, etc., of a Nation. Those statemen knew that Nations 
never enter into a compact, or treaty that contains a stipula- 
tion that they shall be bound together forever. Such a bargain 
is not made except when some very weak nation surrenders 
itself to the control of a strong neighboring nation for protec- 
tion, and it, thereby, loses its position of a sovereign. 

For this reason, and others of prudence on the part of 
some of the States, taught by the conduct of other States while 
colonies and after independence, the "perpetual" clause in the 
Confederation found no favor. The latter had this provision : 
"Nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter (i. e. in the 
"forever") be made in any of these (the Articles) unless such 
alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States 
(colonies then), and be afterwards confirmed by the legislature 
of each State." The sovereign States in 1787 said the Con- 
stitution can be amended by addition, or subtraction, without 
limit, at any time, at the will of three-fourths of the States. 
These two clauses illustrate the difference between the ideas of 
government as expressed by timid colonies struggling for 
liberty and life, and by sovereign States that knew their powers 
and rights, and that they could not, if they would, grant even 
one of them, without destroying their sovereignty. 

It will be edifying to make a record just here of the diff- 
erent positions taken by Lincoln during that undefined contest 
between the Southern Confederacy and the combined Northern 
States during the four years ending in 1865. By so doing we 
get a good view of Lincoln's ignorance of law. "We also get 
further insight into his lawlessness. Wd have seen his persistent 
endeavor to protect his name and fame by insisting that he 



838 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

was only trying to enforce the laws of Congress in the Southern 
States. He called the soldiers of the South "insurgents." He 
said they were in "rebellion," and his only purpose was to 
suppress the "rebellion." He proclaimed that he was trying 
to support and defend the Constitution. In both cases — that is, 
in suppressing an "insurrection" and supporting the Consti- 
tution, he was acting only as President. There was no war! 
No! indeed! If there had been a war, he would have been 
' ' Commander-in-chief of the armies and the Navy. ' ' No State 
was out of the Union — that was impossible ! Therefore, he was 
not waging War. 

Now let's take another view of this law-abiding patriot, 
this learned lawyer and wonderful statesman. We have seen 
that in May, 1862, the officers and crew of a Confederate pri- 
vateer captured by a federal blockader were "pirates" ani 
Lincoln was about to hang them, but some British statesmen 
and lawyers taught him some law — that those men were not 
pirates. He thus learned the difference between pirates and 
belligerents. 

Again: In September, 1862, he issued his Emancipation 
bull. He was not in a war ! He was only trying to compel some 
"insurgents" to obey the laws. He had said»a hundred times 
that Congress had no power to interfere with slavery. Where 
did he get that power? Every power he could exercise was 
given by the Constitution. Aiid the assumption of any other 
power was rank usurpation and the act of a tyrant — a despot. 
Yet, he was not making war — he was upholding the Constitu- 
tion. 

Again: He was not making war, but, eight days before he 
issued the Emancipation bull, in open violation of the Consti- 
tution, he said to a delegation of preachers from Chicago who 
called on him to urge him to issue that Emancipation bull : 

"Understand, I raise no objection against it on legal or 
constitutional grounds, for, as Commander-in-Chief of the army 
and navy in time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any 
measure which may best subdue the Enemy! I view this mat- 
ter (the Proclamation of Emancipation) as a practical war 
measure!" This lawyer and statesman who swore a few 
months before to support the Constitution, has now discovered 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 339 

that he was Commander-in-Chief of an army and navy, actually 
engaged in a War! More than that his "Insurgents" had 
grown to be "the Enemy," Who and what is "the enemy?" 
Vattel and other publicists tell us — "The enemy is he with 
whom a nation is at open war. A public enemy forms claims 
against us, or rejects ours, and maintains his real or pretended 
rights by force of arms," Lincoln had passed the duty of sup- 
porting the Constitution, No "legal or constitutional ground" 
bothered him. He was engaged in a big war, and, therefore, he 
"supposed" he had the right, not as President enforcing the 
laws on "insurgents," but as Commander-in-Chief of millions 
of men engaged in a terrible war with an "Enemy," to take any 
measure that might best aid to conquer the Enemy!" 

Again: In 1863, some "Unconditional Union" men in Illi- 
nois invited Lincoln, through their spokesman, J. C. Conklin ^, 
to attend a mass meeting in Springfield, 111. In his long letter 
to Conkling, who had told Lincoln his Emancipation Procla- 
mation was unconstitutional, he used these words: "You say 
it is unconstitutional. I think differently. I thing the Con- 
stitution invests its Commander-in-chief with the law of war in 
time of war. The most that can be said, if so much, is that 
slaves are property. Is there — has there ever been — any ques- 
tion that by the law of war, property both of enemies and 
friends may be taken when needed? And is it not needed 
wherever taking it helps us, or hurts the enemy? Armies, ihe 
world over, destroy enemies' property when they cannot use 
it. Civilized belligerents do all in their power to help them- 
selves, or hurt the enemy, except a few things regarded as bar- 
barous or cruel. Among the exceptions are the massacre of 
vanquished foes and non-combatants, male and female." He 
then, in a letter of near five octavo pages, proceeds to talk of 
the "rebellion" — "the rebels" — and says — "The emancipation 
policy and the use of the colored troops constituted the heaviest 
blow yet dealt to the Rebellion, and one at least of these im- 
portant successes could not have been achieved where it was, 
but for the aid of black soldiers." 

First, there is nothing but an "insurrection;" then, that 
swells into a rebellion ; and this grows to be a war. Second, he, 
as President, must obey the Constitution by enforcing the laws 



340 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

to collect customs and duties in the Southern ports. But he 
finds there is an "insurrection" in the way. He organizes 
a police force of 117,000 men to assist the U. S. marshals to 
collect the duties. He then discovers that "rebellion" is going 
on. Then^ his "pirates" rise to the dignity of "belligerents." 
Next, the belligerents are discovered to be a "public enemy" 
and the "rebellion" has swollen until it explodes into a War. 
He then resorts to the rules under which "civilized belliger- 
ents" (that is, nations) conduct war — one of which is the right 
to destroy the Enemy's property. 

He denied in the debate with Douglas that one man, under 
God's law, could hold another man as property, but to hurt 
the Enemy, he now discovers that the slaves in the South are 
property. So, in order "to hurt the Enemy" he resorts to the 
law of war between Nations, to destroy the enemy's property, 
which he proceeds to destroy by making them soldiers to shoot 
down their masters — the Enemy. And he finds his power and 
right to destroy this class of property in the Constitution, 
which he often declared gave no power to Congress nor to the 
President to free the slaves. In his first Inaugural, speaking 
to the South, he said: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow- 
countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of Civil 
War." So that, by his own declaration, if Secession was ef- 
fected, or, as he would say, was attempted, there would be 
"Civil War," and he, of course, would be the aggressor. 

But, in fact and under the Law of Nations, that butchery 
was not a civil war, nor a rebellion, nor an insurrection. It was 
a war between the free States and the slave States; between 
eleven nations in confederation and twenty-two other nations in 
confederation. This has no bearing on the absurdities and con- 
tradictions by Lincoln; but it is stated in answer to his own 
statement that the contest was a "Civil War," We are con- 
sidering his attempt to shield himself by calling the war an 
insurrection, or rebellion, and we accept his contention to show 
his infamy and brutality in the methods he adopted to sup- 
press an "insurrection," 



CHAPTER XL VII. 

THE LATIN MAXIM, 'TACIT PER ALIUM 

FACIT PER SE," APPLIED TO LINCOLN. 

Among the many good qualities Lincoln's worshipers, 
through post-mortem examination, have discovered is his heart, 
which they epitomise under the endearing salutation to his 
shades of "Honest Old Abe." Another quality — of his head — 
was overlooked by the sympathetic autopsists. It is his skill 
as a thimble-rigger. The writer claims no credit for the dis- 
covery, for it lies on the surface of the current of his life and 
can be seen by all except the blind. "When Lincoln started into 
Virginia with his Grand Army of the Eepublic, the ball under 
the thimble was marked "Insurrection." "When he decided 
to issue his Emancipation Proclamation, he lifted the thimble 
and the same ball was labelled ""War." "When he invaded 
Virginia, the ball under the thimble had on it — "only doing 
my duty to enforce the laws," but when he lifted the thimble 
the identical ball read — "I am waging war under the rules of 
war that govern Nations. ' ' "When he decided to issue his Proc- 
lamation the ball under his thimble was inscribed — "Nations at 
war have the right to destroy the enemy's property," but 
when he raised the thimble there stood the destroyed prop- 
erty in blue uniforms, with guns, ammunition and haversacks, 
ready to kill their masters — "the enemy." No wonder is it that 
throughout the war he was cursed and damned by even his 
backers — the Abolutionists ! As he protested in all his writings, 
speeches, and talks during the four years, that he was only 
"suppressing an insurrection," we shall get a clear view of 
his humanity, justice, sincerity and knowledge of law, by a 
brief review of his methods of effecting his purpose. 

It is one of the Laws of Nations that the head of an army, 
whether King, Emperor or President of a republic, is respon- 
sible for what his subordinate officers do in the prosecution of a 
war. The latin maxim — facit per alium facit per se, — what 



342 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

one does through another, he himself does — applies to the 
commander-in-chief of an army. Hence the acts of Lincoln's 
Generals were in law his own. An instance is found during 
Lincoln's ** insurrection " that proves his recognition of that 
law. His Major General, David Hunter, whose military depart- 
ment embraced Georgia, South Carolina and Florida, issued a 
General Order, May 9th, 1862, at Hilton Head, S. C, declaring 
all slaves in those three States to be "forever free." Lincoln, 
not approving the Order, two days thereafter revoked it. 
Officers in the field promptly reported their action to the Adju- 
tant General in Washington, and Lincoln knew all that was 
transpiring. 

Just here I insert a communication from Gen. Robert E. 
Lee that serves several purposes. It shows, first, Lincoln's in- 
humanity and brutal method of "putting down a little insurrec- 
tion," as he expressed himself to the European Powers; second, 
his total disregard of human life and property-rights of all 
people of the South; third, his ignorance or contempt for the 
Laws of Nations, and, fourth, it illumines with the brightest 
light of the noon-day sun the impassable gulf between the 
Cavalier and the Puritan ; it shows the chasm between the civili- 
zation of the South and that of the North ; it is a sermon on the 
immeasurable difference between the exalting power of Chris- 
tianity and brutal paganism ; it is the living breath of Honor, 
Justice and Mere}', rebuking the despot, arrogant and brutal 
in his confidence of victory based on largely superior numbers. 
Finally, it will stand as a monument to Lee and his Saxon 
heroes when, on the ruins of the marble memorials to Lincoln, 
owls shall hoot to the surrounding desolation and bats shall 
hold their trystings in the crannies of the mausoleum of Grant. 
"Headquarters Army of the Confederate States, 
"Near Richmond, Virginia, August 2, 1862. 

"To the General Commanding United States Army, Wash- 
ington : 

"General — In obedience to the order of his Excellency, the 
President of the Confederate States, I have the honor to make 
to you the following communication : 

' ' On the 22d of July last a cartel for a general exchange of 
prisoners of war was signed by Major General John A. Dix, 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 343 

on behalf of the United States, and by Major General D. H. 
Hill, on the part of this Government. By the terms of thai 
cartel it is stipulated that all prisoners of war hereafter taken 
shall be discharged on parole until exchanged. 

''Scarcely had the cartel been signed when the military 
authorities of the United States commenced a practice chang- 
ing the character of the war from such as becomes civilized 
nations, into a campaign of indiscriminate robbery and 
murder. 

'*A general order, issued by the Secretary of War of the 
United States, in the city of Washington, on the very day that 
the cartel was signed in Virginia, directs the military com- 
mander of the United States to take the property of our 
people, for the convenience and use of the navy, without 
compensation. 

"A general order, issued by Major General Pope, on the 
23d of July last, the day after the date of the cartel, directs 
the murder of our peaceful citizens as spies, if found quietly 
tilling their farms in his rear, even outside of his lines. 

"And one of his Brigadier Generals, Steinwehr, has seized 
innocent and peaceful inhabitants to be held as hostages, to the 
end that they may be murdered in cold blood if any of his 
soldiers are killed by some unkown persons, whom he desig- 
nated as 'bushwhackers.' 

"Some of the military authorities of the United States 
seem to suppose that their end will be better attained by a 
savage war, in which no quarter is to be given, and no age 
or sex to be spared, than by such hostilities as are alone 
recognized to be lawful in modern times. We find ourselves 
driven by our enemies, by steady progress, towards a practice 
which we abhor, and which we are vainly struggling to avoid. 

"Under these circumstances this Government has issued 
the accompanying general order, which I am directed by the 
President to transmit to you, recognizing Major General Pope 
and his commissioned officers to be in a position which they 
have chosen for themselves — that of robbers and murderers, 
and not that of public enemies, entitled, if captured, to be 
treated as prisoners of war. 



344 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

"The President also instructs me to inform you that we 
renounce our right of retaliation on the innocent, and will 
continue to treat the private enlisted soldiers of General 
Pope's army as prisoners of war; but if, after notice to your 
government that we confine repressive measures to the punish- 
ment of commissioned officers, v*^ho are willing participants in 
these crimes, the savage practices threatened in the orders 
alluded to be persisted in, we shall reluctantly be forced to 
the last resort of accepting the war on the terms chosen by our 
enemies, until the voice of an outraged humanity shall compel 
a respect for the recognized usages of war. 

"While the President considered that the facts referred 
to would justify a refusal on our part to execute the cartel, 
by which we have agreed to liberate an excess of prisoners 
of war in our hands, a sacred regard for plighted faith, which 
shrinks from the semblance of breaking a promise, precludes 
a resort to such an extremity. Nor is it his desire to extend 
to any other forces of the United States the punishment 
merited by General Pope and such commissioned officers as 
clioose to participate in the execution of his infamous orders. 

'I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient 
servant, 

"R. E. Lee, General Commanding." 

Note the fact that Gen. Pope's order was issued by 
Lincoln's Secretary of War. Can any one believe that the 
Secretary issued that without Lincoln's permission? Is any 
man such a fool as to assume authority to issue such an 
order without the knowledge of his superior officer — Lincoln? 
The man who believes he did, knows less of war than an ant. 
By the Law of Nations, no sovereign ever takes the property 
of his own subjects not engaged in rebellion without paying 
for it, or giving a receipt to be redeemed after he quells the 
rebellion. When he refuses to pay he is classed as a highAvay 
robber. Here, Lincoln ordered Pope to rob the people of the 
South. He said — "take, but don't pay!" 

Again: No sovereign who is not a tyrant, and at heart 
a murderer, ever kills a subject not in arms against him. 
But Lincoln ordered Poj)e to kill any and all citizens of the 
Southern States who might be within his military lines. He 



TRUE VIKDIckTION OF THE SOUTH 345 

must shoot them as ''spies" — without trial, without arrest- 
without asking a question! There is nothing in the history 
of wars within the past three hundred years, or since the Duke 
of Alva desolated the Netherlands, that parallels this Order 
of Lincoln to murder all men only because they did not abandon 
homes, wives and children, and fly before his advancing 
butchers. The arrest at his home of the Due d'Enghien by 
order of Napoleon, the mock trial by court-martial, his prede- 
termined conviction in order to strike terror into the hearts of 
assassins of whom Enghein was only suspected as one, the de- 
nial of religious consolation by a priest, and his execution 
by torch-light the next morning, wear some features of law. 
Still, this order of Napoleon is a blood-stain on his glory 
that Time can never efface. But this order of Lincoln overlays 
immeasurably the horror of that of Napoleon. The man and 
the spot where he might be seen dispensed with arrest, trial 
and proof of guilt. Lincoln's order was his death warrant, 
and every white or black vagabond clothed in blue was com- 
missioned to murder him. Is other proof required of the 
demoniac purpose of Lincoln in precipitating the war without 
convening Congress; of his thirst for blood, of his hatred of 
slave-owners? Is there a parallel, in any open war betAveen 
nations, to this command to assassinate innocent citizens dur- 
ing an "insurrection?" If this infamous order were the only 
evidence of brutality, it is enough to enroll Lincoln's name with 
the Duke of Alva, but it is one link only in a chain that 
stretched, step by step, hour by hour, by night and by day, 
over State after State, to the City of Columbia. When Gen. Lee 
had to draw in his lines to defend Richmond, Phil Sheridan, 
under an order to make the Shenandoah Valley a wilderness, 
swept through it, burning dwellings, barns, mills — destroying 
everything that could support life. He boasted that "a crow 
flying over the valley would have to carry its rations. ' ' 

But as it is impossible to make a record of the barbarities 
of three million men scattered through sixteen States during 
a period of nearly four years, we will conclude this view of 
Lincoln by reference to the ' ' March through Georgia. ' ' Lincoln 
gave free rein to a General more savage than the Indian Chief 
whose name he bore. His Lincolnian method of "suppressing 



346 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

insurrection" was so glorious that it inflated a Northern 
rhymester with doggerel until it exploded into a National Hymn 
called * * Marching through Georgia. ' ' He signalized his march, 
first by applying the torch to Atlanta, after driving from their 
homes non-combatant women and children to bear the peltings 
of pitiless storms without shelter or food. There being no 
enemy between him and the sea, he must demonstrate his 
generalship by giving battle against something. So he 
deployed his troops to the right, then to the left, and by tact- 
ical flank movement he closed in on empty dwellings, negro 
quarters, gin houses, hen roosts, pigsties and barns, and cap- 
tured them without the loss of even one of his heroes, dead or 
wounded, or firing a gun. But as a conquest without firing a 
gun is not considered as the highest proof of generalship, or 
heroism, some firing had to be done. So the general then cele- 
brated his victory by firing the dwellings, the gin houses and 
the barns. 

Now, every Northern visitor of musical proclivity knows 
that Southern mules are very polite and affectionate in front, 
and when they behold a large drove of their relations approach- 
ing they salute them with most vociferous joy. General Tecum- 
seh, not being well acquainted with this family greeting, at 
once conceived the idea that the mules' exclamations, which 
are not so enchanting as sonorous, were disrespectful to the 
Flag — "Old Glory." Besides, he was indignant because he 
construed the insurgents' hee-haws to be an imitation of Lin- 
coln's guffaws that he always gave in applause of his own 
stories. He therefore ordered the Corps commanded by 
"Black Jack" Logan to deploy so as to surround the "insur- 
gents" and close in, with "bayonets at charge" and arrest 
them, but not to advance if "the enemy" turned their heels. 
"Black Jack" ordered his band to play one of Lincoln's favo- 
rite hymns, composed by himself — 

"Hail Columbia, happy land. 
If you aint drunk I will be damned. ' ' 
This music was rendered to soothe the savage breasts of 
the "insurgents." The "insurgents," seeing so many familiar 
faces advancing, and being moved by the sentiment of Old 
Abe's favorite song, repeated their friendly salutation and 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 347 

sang bass in chorus with the band. Being thus diverted by 
the tactics of the enemy the capture of the "insurgents" was 
achieved without firing a gun. A court martial was hastily 
convened. The "insurgents," while accorded the right to be 
tried by their peers, were denied their constitutional right to be 
represented by counsel, and were forthwith found guilty on 
two charges, first of "insurgency" or "rebellion," and second, 
of having twice insulted the Flag, and mimicked the Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy. The young "insur- 
gents" M^ere sentenced to serve in the Artillery "for and dur- 
ing the insurrection," and the old "insurgents," who, the court 
martial assumed without proof, had at some time been sworn 
to support the Constitution — which of course included respect 
for the flag — were sentenced to be shot without benefit of 
clergy. 

Now, it is "a Universal Law" (this is quoted from Lincoln's 
Inaugural, and must be accepted as good law by all law-abiding 
citizens) among all civilized peoples that horses, mules, cows, 
hogs and chickens are classed as non-combatants — roosters 
alone excepted. This exception is due to the fact that one of 
the wide variety of Abraham Lincoln's many businesses, before 
he became commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the 
United States of America, was cock-fighting. With that single 
exception in respect for his memory, his "Universal Law" we 
must accept as almost correct, although we are not acquainted 
with it. We can believe, however, that it must be immense. 

Now, will the next biographer of "humble Abraham Lin- 
coln" (as he always spoke of himself when hunting for office), 
tell us why he did not obey his Universal Law while "only 
quelling an insurrection?" Universal Law must be God's law 
— man cannot make "Universal Law." By what law did he 
draft non-combatant mules and make soldiers of them? By 
what law did he permit Tecumseh's officers and privates to 
loot and plunder every house they came to in Georgia — the 
officers having the first grab and the privates "confiscating" 
what the officers could not take away. By what law, after 
Tecumseh enlisted the mules and horses in the artillery and 
cavalry, and the cows, and hogs and chickens in his commis- 
sary department, did he shoot all old mules and horses too old 



348 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

to be enlisted? Why did he deprive the old mules and horses 
of the bounty that was paid on enlistment, and, also, of the 
benefit of the next pension the Republican Congress intended 
to vote to them or their children, or to the next of kin? The 
fact that "mules have neither pride of ancestry nor hope of 
posterity" is no obstruction in the path of Congress to the 
treasury. If it should be, it will have the honorable distinction 
of being the first and only one. 

By what law did Lincoln sweep clean the homes of widows 
and orphans, the stables, barns, hog-pens, henneries, smoke- 
houses, of every thing therein, and set the torch to every build- 
ing and shed in his triumphant ''March through Georgia?" 
Was this ruin and inhumanity perpetrated by him by right 
given by the laws of war as established by the Law of Nations? 
No ! Never ! He cannot blow hot and cold in the same breath. 
There is no chance here for thimblerigging; "out of his own 
mouth he shall be condemned." 

"In the corrupted currents of this world, 
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice. 
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself 
Buj's out the law ; but 'tis not so above : 
There is no shuffling ; there the action lies 
In his true nature ; and we ourselves compelled 
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults 
To give in evidence." 
Lincoln tried to perform an impossible feat. He tried to ride 
on both sides of a sapling at the same moment of time. He 
tried to ride, at the same time, two horses going in opposite di- 
rections. He tried to justify his Emancipation Proclamation by 
appealing to the Law of Nations which permits destruction of 
"the enemy's" property in time of War. If he was waging 
war, then under the Constitution he had no right to wage war 
against a State or States. War is a contest between different 
independent nations. The rules of war cannot be resorted to 
by a sovereign, or other ruler of a people to suppress an insur- 
rection, or a rebellion. The rules are as different as is the 
difference of war between two sovereigns and any domestic 
uprising, whether it be sedition, insurrection or rebellion. If 
there was no war, Lincoln could not conduct his military opera- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 349 

tions under and according to the laws governing enemies at 
war. If there was war, then the Confederacy was a nation, and 
was no part of the Union, and he had no more right or power 
to invade this territory with an army than he had to invade 
Canada or Mexico without cause. And every man and boy 
killed those four years was murdered by command of Abraham 
Lincoln, and he stands before the courts of the world and 
before the Judgment Seat of God drenched in the innocent 
blood of a million men. If there was no war, if that struggle 
was only an insurrection, then he stands self-condemned as the 
most brutal, savage, heartless, robber of women and children 
that has ever robbed, stolen, and killed at the head of armies. 



CHAPTER XLVm. 

THE CUNNIN;G AND TREACHEFvY 

OF LINCOLN. 

William H. Seward, Lincoln's premier, said of him — "His 
cunning amounts to genius." He thus assigns to his master 
intellectuality of a high but not enviable order, as the Bible 
says "the serpent is the most cunning of all beasts." Premier 
in position, this official is premier of all witnesses. He had dis- 
sected his subject from his early manhood to his death. No 
man knew Lincoln so well as this witness. Besides, Nature 
had endowed Seward so amply with the same low quality that 
his testimony has the additional value of the confession of 
superiority wrung from a jealous competitor. He boasted of 
his cunning in deceiving Jefferson Davis. (Usher's Keminis- 
cences of Lincoln, page 80.) He deceived Virginia's Peace 
Commissioners by such base cunning that, on the train bearing 
them home with high hope was carried Lincoln's call for 75,000 
troops to invade Virginia. Like master, like man. A trace of 
Lincoln's cunning will now be made. The reader is invited to 
read carefully again the evidence of Dr. Holland, one of 
Lincoln's admirers and eulogists, quoted on page 374. 

The writer challenges the worshipers of the dead Lincoln 
to produce from the records of history a parallel to this descrip- 
tion of any man, given by a multitude of unbiased friends, 
associates and neighbors. "The dead Lincoln" is mentioned 
because the living Lincoln had no worshipers, and his few 
admirers were the negrophilists. Is this testimony of " a cloud 
of witnesses," disinterested and unimpeachable, to be ignored 
— ^to be denounced as false — unworthy of belief? Yes — fanatics 
are not to be balked when they set their faces to reach a de- 
sired goal. They have swept away these witnesses as a tempest 
clears a path of dead leaves. And Seward, too, has been rele- 
gated to the Club of Ananias. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 351 

What man has ever worn from youth to manhood — from 
manhood to his death at 54 years — such a bewildering, impene- 
trable masque ? Mephistopheles, a creature of a glowing imag- 
ination, falls short of this reality. Machiavelli, flesh and blood, 
did not accomplish the achievement here, by unanimous ac- 
claim, accorded to this mortal. 

But we leave these slaughtered witnesses in the ignoble 
oblivion to which fanaticism and hatred of the South have con- 
signed them, and pass on to summon another class not so re- 
spectable but of undeniable veracity. Chief Justice Marshall 
once said to a lawyer who was insisting that a certain thing 
was a fact because it was stated in a statute — "Do you think 
an act of legislation can create or destroy a fact, or change 
the truth of history? Would it alter the fact if a legislature 
should solemnly enact that Mr. Hume never wrote the history 
of England? A legislature may alter a law, but no power can 
reverse a fact." Daniel Webster was in court and heard the 
colloquy. 

These damnifiers to perdition of Seward, and Lincoln's 
friends, associates and neighbors, must meet the facts that do 
not, cannot lie. They may pile books over and around their 
idol mountain-high, but their labor to falsify history will be 
in vain. What follov/s here, expository of Lincoln's cunning, 
will relate only to slavery, his political schemes before election 
in 1860, and what he did after his election to tyrannize both the 
South and the North. 

When a boathand he floated down to New Orleans. There 
he loafed several days "to see the sights." Among them was 
a sale of some negro slaves. He turned to his fellow boatmen, 
and, with all his energy of speech and gesture, swore — ' ' if ever 
I get a lick at that thing, I'll hit it hard !" From that hour he 
was transformed into an enemy of slaveholders and of slavery. 
' ' To hit them hard ' ' was from that day his ambition. We shall 
see that he never faltered, and that his cunning guided him 
through many devious paths to his goal. We must skip twenty 
years or more as uneventful in his career. But terrible com- 
motions were over the Union, caused by the rapid growth of 
the Abolitionists as has already been described. He was sent 
to the legislature several times during that interval. His only 



352 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE S OUTH 

distinction won by that service was his bill, which was enacted, 
for the State of Illinois to enter upon a vast system of internal 
improvements that came near putting the State into bank- 
ruptcy. This is a part of his record as a statesman. If any- 
thing he was a Whig; but his political garment was like his 
own personal attire, that never fit well enough to exhibit fully 
or to conceal his natural deformities. From manhood he was 
ambitious — and always for political position. Herndon and 
Lamon — his biographers — emphasize this longing for office. In 
1846 he aspired to be a member of Congress, and was elected. 
From that time to 1858 his gaze was always directed to some 
office. In 1858 he aspired to be U. S. Senator. Then followed 
the debates between him and Douglas — which wafted his name 
beyond the borders of Illinois. The Whig Party had gone to 
pieces in 1852. The Northern section drifted by natural affilia- 
tion into the Abolition camp. Lincoln, wary and wily, held 
back. That camp then was under the ban of the law-abiding. 
Lincoln was importuned to join it, but feared to enter. "He 
ran with the hare and barked with the hound." That is, he 
was cheek by jowl with its members, but shied at sight of their 
camp. During their joint debates Douglas often charged him 
with deceit and cunning. Northern Illinois was thoroughly 
tainted with abolition, while Southern Illinois was democratic. 
Douglas charged that Lincoln had the face of Janus. One he 
held to the North and the other to the South of the State. He 
had a different speech for each end of the State. Cunning! 
On a night appointed the Abolitionists w^re to hold a public 
meeting in Springfield, the capital. Lincoln was urged to 
attend. He agreed, but, in the afternoon he found important 
business in the country and fled. Cunning ! In 1854 the Aboli- 
tionists were re-baptized the fourth time, and came to the sur- 
face cleansed of their sins and named Republicans. Still, 
Lincoln could see the same old wolf under the sheepskin that 
was whelped in Boston in 1832. It had grown immensely, but 
he doubted its longevity. The first christening still stuck to it, 
and Lincoln believed it might not survive that ignominy. He 
was a furious abolitionist in talk, but Lincoln's ambition was 
the governor of his acts. Cunning ! 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 353 

But those instances of cunning, while indicative of his 
nature, are of minor value compared to his action after his 
election as President, and to these we now turn. During the 
short session of Congress before he assumed control of the 
reins he kept daily watch over its proceedings. He was op- 
posed to all propositions for an amicable adjustment by com- 
promise. He telegraphed E. B. Washburne, a member from Illi- 
nois, to oppose all such offers. Any compromise would have 
robbed Lincoln of the opportunity to gratify his ambition to be 
the Great Emancipator. His administration would have been 
the most contemptible of any since the Union was formed. Per- 
sonally he was gibed, jeered, hooted at, over the North. He 
was dubbed ape, gorilla, fool, gawk — by his own Party and by 
his party press. He would have been the butt for foreign am- 
bassadors, for fashionable society, and of members of Congress. 
And his first term would have been his last. He knew this as 
well as he knew that if his party had believed there was reason- 
able hope of his election, he could not have been nominated. 
Cunning! On December 21st, 1860, he wrote to E. B. "Wash- 
burne a letter of which the following is a copy. It was marked 
"confidential." 

"Springfield, Dec. 21, 1860. 
"Hon. E. B. Washburne. 

"My dear Sir: — Last night I received your letter giving an 
account of your interview with Gen. Scott, for which I thank 
you. Please present my respects to the General and tell him 
conMentialiy I shall be obliged to him to be as well prepared 
as he can to either hold or retake the forts, as the case may 
require, at or after the inauguration. 
"Yours, as ever, 

"A. Lincoln." 

This letter the public knew nothing of until 1885. South 
Carolina had seceded the day before, but no fort had been 
taken or occupied by her. But South Carolina, the day before 
(December 20th), had seceded. Does it require a seer to know 
what was in Lincoln's mind — what his purpose was — when he 
indited that letter to be held in confidence by both Washburne 
and Gen. Scott? "Be prepared to retake forts when I become 
President ! ' ' Was he such a simpleton as to believe that forts 



354 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

once taken by seceded States could be retaken by the asking? 
If so, why instruct the General of the Army to get his forces 
ready — ''to be prepared?" A rice-field negro in Carolina, see- 
ing this letter, could discern behind it the tyrant — the tiger 
crouched for the deadly leap. 

Now lay the following letter to Alexander H. Stephens by 
the side of the above to Washburne, and note the difference. 
The true Lincoln wrote to Washburne ; Lincoln with his masque 
on — the cunning Lincoln — wrote to Stephens. But one night 
passed between the two utterances. 

"December 22nd, 1860. 
"Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, 

" Crawf ordville, Ga. 

"Dear Sir: — ^Do the people of the South entertain fears that 
a Republican administration would directly or indirectly inter- 
fere with the slaves, or with them about their slaves? If they 
do, I vv^ish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not 
an enemy, that there is no cause for fear. 

"Yours truly, 

"A. Lincoln." 

This letter, also, was to be held confidential. He wrote on 
it "for 3'our own eye only." If his design was to make a peace- 
offering to the South, why put Stephens on his honor to keep 
the contents secret? Of what avail would be his assurance 
that there "is no cause for fear," if it is locked up in Stephens's 
breast? The cunning of the serpent, revealed by his action 
four months later, is read of all men. While he was arming f oi* 
war, he designed to keep the South inactive and unprepared, 
so he could strike a decisive blow. But it may be asked — why 
pledge Stephens to keep his peaceable purpose secret? There- 
in his cunning and perfidy are shown. He knew that an open 
address to the people of the South would be construed by them 
as a trick, and his fanatical followers, who had chosen him as 
their leader avowedly to free the negroes would charge him 
with cowardice, and treason. But he knew that no man could 
be expected to keep secret a communication affecting the 
safety, or life, of the republic. He knew it would be used as 
he intended it should be— and hoped that its effect would allay 
fear and delay preparation to meet Scott's army. If published 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 855 

he could defend against the fanatics by proving it was but a 
trick to keep the South quiet. In proof of this he would show 
his confidential letter to Washburne written only the day before 
to tell Scott to get ready for war. 

The next public exhibition of cunning was in his Inaugural 
address, March 4th, 1861. Bearing in mind his telegram to 
Washburne to oppose all compromise that would give another 
foot of territory to slaver^-, and his letter telling Scott to pre- 
pare for retaking forts (which he knew meant war), we quote 
only a few words he addressed to the South. After saying "it 
is the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutional- 
ly defend and maintain itself," he adds: "In doing so, there 
need be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless 
it is forced upon the National Authority. In your hands, my 
dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous 
issue of Civil war. The Government will not assault you. You 
can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors!" 
(Aside : "Hurry up. Gen Scott ! to retake and hold the forts !") 
"I am loath to close. "We are not enemies, but friends. We are 
not enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not 
break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, 
stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave, to every 
living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet 
swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely 
they will be, by the better angels of our nature." 

There will be "no bloodshed — ^no civil war" — all will be 
lovely. But — * ' hurry up ! Gen. Scott ! and get ready for war ! ' ' 
* ' But don 't you dare to say a word of my letter ! ' ' 

Being installed, his Cabinet assembled — the Arch Anarchist, 
his premier and cunning adviser, present — orders were given to 
the Secretaries of War and Navy to hurry preparations for the 
struggle when he should give the order. From his high emi- 
nence he realized his terrible dilemma. He had been chosen by 
the lawless elements to ride down the Constitution — the bond 
of Union. He knew his band was a minority, and, as all mobs 
are, unpopular and impecunious. He dared not revel his 
purpose to demonstrate that this country must be "all free or 
^11 slave." Abolition by force would not be tolerated in the 
North — men and money would not support him. Hence, he 



356 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SO UTH 

must reach his goal by circumvention. That opened a field for 
the exercise of his greatest endowment — cunning ! And for suc- 
cess he had chosen one who stood but little lower than himself 
in the art of deception. The slogan of Freedom for the negro 
could rally the fanatics — who, like Falstaff's regiment, could 
steal a shirt from every bush as they had stolen negroes — ^but 
they were only fighters with tongue and pen, with paper bul- 
lets. He must wait until time, accident, or some move by "the 
enemy" should give a rallying cry. 

Soon after Carolina seceded, Major Anderson — in command 
of Forts Moultrie and Sumter, and Castle Pinckney, had sud- 
denly evacuated the first two — spiking the guns, burning the 
gun-carriages and cutting down the flag staff — and had moved 
the garrison into Fort Sumter, whose guns covered Charles- 
ton. Then followed an attempt to reinforce Sumter with men, 
arms and supplies. The vessel — "Star of the "West" — sent for 
that purpose was fired on by Carolina troops in the abandoned 
forts, and returned North. These acts were done under Buch- 
anan's administration. The shots at the United States flag 
flying on the "Star of the West" produced no war enthusiasm 
in the North. Meantime Congress was seething with proposi- 
tions for a compromise to restore peace between the two sec- 
tions. To be brief — all efforts at adjustment failed. Lincoln 
was prompting Washburne and others to vote them down. 

Eight days after Lincoln's inauguration two of the Con- 
federate Peace Commissioners — Crawford and Forsyth — having 
arrived in Washington, presented by letter their credentials 
to Lincoln's premier — Seward. Lincoln refused to see them, 
and turned them over to his wily adviser. He played them off. 
They were told — "Mr. Seward desired to avoid making any 
reply at that time." But he wrote a "Memorandum" as a 
reply, March 15th, and concealed it in his office. Then Justice 
Campbell of the U. S. Supreme Court appealed to Justice 
Nelson, a friend of Seward, to see him. Justice Nelson did 
so, and reported to Justice Campbell, and assured him that 
"Seward was strongly inclined to a peaceable arrangement." 
Judge Campbell then sought Seward and had an interview. 
The result was that he "felt entire confidence that Fort 
Sumter would be evacuated in ten days, and that no measure 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 357 



prejudicial to the Southern Confederate States are at present 
contemplated. ' ' Seward was informed of the assurance having 
been reported by Justice Campbell to the Confederate Commis- 
sioners . This assurance was communicated to President Davis, 
who, relying on Seward's honor, suspended all military opera- 
tions at and around Charleston. This "Memorandum" pre- 
pared by Seward on March 15th, was still sleeping quietly in 
its pigeon-hole. It enjoyed twenty-three days of rest before 
it was aroused and thrown in the face of the Peace Commis- 
sioners to explode as the opening bomb of the war. But during 
that ominous slumber a squadron had been fitted out secretly 
in New York harbor to proced to Fort Sumter with troops, 
guns, ammunition and provisions as supplies for a siege. The 
Peace Commissioners again requested Justice Campbell to see 
Seward, and he renewed his ironical assurance in words that 
are emblazoned in history. He replied to Justice Campbell — 
"Faith as to Sumter fully kept — wait and see!" The next 
morning Justice Campbell and the Peace Commissioners read 
in the press that Lincoln had sent a messenger to Gov. Pickens 
of South Carolina that Fort Sumter would be relieved "peace- 
ably or by force." The war fleet was then at sea on its voyage 
to Sumter. The "Memorandum" was then aroused from its 
repose of twenty-three days to do its deadly work. 

Cunning? Yes — double cunning! Seward was fooling the 
Peacemakers at Lincoln's command, while Lincoln was fooling 
Seward and the country. Seward, all his biographers and 
eulogists say, was indifferent to Secession. He said "it was all 
a humbug." He said to Wm. H. Russell, war correspondent 
of the London Times, "I am confident there will be reaction. 
The seceded States will see their mistake, and one after another 
they will come back into the Union," How was Lincoln fooling 
Seward? He made Seward hold back the "Memorandum," 
which was to dismiss the Confederate Commissioners with con- 
tempt, while he was hurrying Welles, Secretary of the Navy, 
to get a fleet off to Fort Sumter. He laiew Seward was not for 
war as the first step, and he concealed from him that his pur- 
pose was to force the Confederates to fire on "Old Glory" to 
give him what he needed, and without which he could not 
arouse the war-spirit in the North. He planned to send the 



353 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

fleet because he knew it Avould open the war by which his life 
ambition to be the "Great Emancipator of the Slaves" could 
be realized. 

That Lincoln's cunning may be clearly understood it is 
important to bear in mind his declarations and compare them 
with his acts. "There will be no civil war — no hostile invasion. 
I only intend to enforce the laws as I have sworn to do." His 
premier, at Lincoln's command, informed, by letters, the 
crowned heads of Europe, that the disturbance in this country 
was nothing more than an insurrection. Every Euler in the 
Old World knew what that word means, and with their igno- 
rance of our complex form of government, believing that our 
President, like themselves, was the supreme Ruler, and, as such, 
had authority to quell an insurrection with his army, they 
accepted his falsehood as truth. . 

Again : To avoid the Constitution, and the well known fact 
that the delegates wdio framed the Constitution voted down 
unanimously a proposition to give the federal government 
power to make v/ar on a State, Lincoln and Seward kept on 
repeating-the declaration, at home and abroad, that there was 
no war — and. he was only trying to quell an insurrection. This 
falsehood was veiled in the hourly and unvarying use of the 
words "Rebel" and "Rebellion." This cunning was to inspire 
his soldiers with the pleasing delusion that they were the heroic 
patriots fighting and dying "to preserve liberty by saving the 
Union," As they knew nothing of the law that established 
immovably the relations of the States and the federal govern- 
ment, and had dinned into their heads that the mighty federal 
government was a Nation, like Great Britain, or Spain, or 
Russia, they had no conception that Lincoln in contemplation 
of law, and through hatred of the South and slavery, was 
using them as cut-thyoats and murderers, to gratify his insane 
ambition. 

Before entering the dark and dismal labj-rinth where lay 
shrouded from mortal ken the secret impulses of the heart of 
this human Sphinx, let us contemplate the panoramic scene 
stretching far and wide around him when, after the mockery 
of kissing the Book he had labored to discredit by mimicry 
and ridicule, and after quaffing the delicious plaudits of his 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 859 

fanatical following — he, like the Turk "at midnight in his 
guarded tent," in the solitude of his imperial couch, was dream- 
ing of the glory that awaited him. Then another panorama, 
bodied forth by an imagination of infinite sweep, rises unbidden 
to our vision, that, in some of its gloomy and horrid features, 
bears resemblance to this one of reality now before us : 
"High on his seat of royal state, which far 
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
Or where the gorgeous Bast, with richest hand 
Showers on her Kings barbaric pearl and gold, 
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised 
To that bad eminence." 
As comparison of small things to great, ofttimes, by contrast, 
enforces comprehension, just as pictures of scenes in history 
make more lasting impress on the mind than verbal description, 
we will take a glance at two colossal figures — one, the hero of 
a sublime Epic — of war waged in Heaven ; the other, the ruling 
spirit in the world's most terrible tragedy; one in war celestial, 
the other in war terrestrial ; one, a Rebel, falling from his lofty 
angelic station — "with ambitious aim, 

"Against the throne and monarchy of God 
Raised impious war in Heaven;" 
The other, from man's lowest station in his fallen state, rising 
above the ground by capillary ascension, "with ambitious aim," 
against all laws of men and commands of God, raised impious 
war on His footstool. 

One, mad by ambition, overthrown, preferred "to reign 
in Hell than serve in Heaven;" the other felt that "to reign 
is worth ambition, though in Hell!" One, Chief in command 
of millions of fallen angels, assaulted for destruction the battle- 
ments of Heaven; the other, Chief in command of millions of 
fallen, rebellious mortals, assaulted for destruction Earth's 
strongest Temple — the only Paradise the children of Adam and 
Eve have enjoyed since they fell by sin and were driven from 
the Garden of Eden. 



CHAPTER XUX. 
LINCOLN'S DECEPTION OF THE PEOPLE 

NORTH AND SOUTH. 

The lie so oft repeated as to be now a part of history as 
made by Northern writers, is, that the vessels controlled by the 
common agent of all the States — the federal government — 
which had been sent into the Southern waters, were merchant 
vessels. How came it that only four days after Lincoln's call 
for troops, he issued a proclamation to the world of the block- 
ade of all ports in seven Southern States, and that all persons 
who should molest the vessels would be treated as pirates? 
Were they changed from merchant vessels, armed with cannon 
and carriage, manned and fully equipped, and at their blockade 
moorings, within four days — three of which were required to 
reach the nearest, and seven days to reach the farthest of the 
blockaded ports stretching from Charleston, S. C. to Galveston, 
Texas? Lincoln's worshipers must take one or the other horn 
of a dilemma here presented — either that he proclaimed a false- 
hood to the nations of Europe, or accept Seward's dictum of 
Lincoln's cunning, and, also, of his perfidy in dealing with the 
North as well as with the South. He was "fooling all the 
people" at that early stage of his Dictatorship and Despotism. 
The people of the North did not dream of the cunning of this 
victim of melancholia who had for many months been preparing 
for the coup de grace sprung on the North within one month 
after he took the oath of office to support the Constitution. 

But the cunning he showed in deceiving the Confederate 
Commissioners and Justices Campbell and Nelson, and the Com- 
missioners sent by Virginia, and all Europe, by his paper- 
blockade, was negligible in comparison with his deception of 
the people of the North. The history of the period between 
secession by South Carolina and Lincoln's inauguration proves 
that the controling people in the North were against war on 
the Confederate States. Horace Greeley, whose paper, the 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH £61 

Tribune, was the strongest molder of public opinion on the ques- 
tion of slavery, said — ''Let the wayward sisters go in peace." 
Seward — Lincoln's mentor — said, "The Southern States will 
soon see their mistake and return to the Union." The most 
rabid fanatics on slavery had accomplished their purpose — they 
had gotten rid of that "twin sister of barbarism." They knew 
that the remaining slave-States would be compelled, for secu- 
rity, to follow and join the seceded States. President Buch- 
anan, guided by the -written opinion of his legal adviser, Attor- 
ney General Jeremiah S. Black, had decided that the President 
had no right to invade a State with a hostile army. The religious 
section that had fallen in behind the irreligious fanatics were 
appeased by ridding the Union of "the sin of slavery." The 
radicals who had threatened to secede and form a Northern 
Confederacy, had attained their aim by the secession of the 
slave States. The commercial interests, so potent with the 
purse for peace or war, were against war, especially by invasion 
of the South. Mass meetings were held in New York City 
and Philadelphia and expressed their opposition to fraternal 
bloodshed. The legislature of Massachusetts showed a spirit 
of reconciliation by modifying her Personal Liberty Law by 
an Act passed as late as March 25th, 1861. Many other facts 
could be given to prove that the overwhelming majority of the 
men at the North had no thought of or desire for war between 
the States. 

But more than 1,800,000 voters, all of the Free States, had 
chosen a man to rule them and to hold their lives at his will, 
of whose bosom-councils they were in total ignorance. They 
had blindly placed themselves as pawns in the game he intended 
to play with the God of Battles. Fanatics see but one object, 
and that is projected forward from the brain. Nothing to the 
right, the left, or the rear is visible. So ignorant as to believe 
that a President could abolish slavery, and that it would con- 
tinue so long as a Democrat should be President, they hailed 
Lincoln as the deliverer of the country from that abomina- 
tion. Their cry was not in vain, but litle did they dream that, 
to answer their prayer, he, to the music of "The Dead Man's 
March," would wade through their blood and stride the 
trenches where their flesh lay rotting. 



332 TRUE VINDICATION 0¥ THE SOUTH 

On the 20th of April, by his order, the shipyard at Norfolk, 
Va., was set on fire at midnight and abandoned by the com- 
mandant and garrison. One warship was burned and six 
frigates were sunk. All other property in the shipyard belong- 
ing to the States was burnt or broken up. On the 21st the 
officer in command at Harper's Ferry burnt the buildings 
belonging to the States, and moved his command to Washing- 
ton; and on the 22nd of April Lincoln directed his Secretary 
of War to express to the officer in command his approbation of 
the destruction of that valuable property. On the 19th of 
April troops from New York and Massachusetts arrived in Balti- 
more. There and then occurred the first conflict and was shed 
the first blood of the war. Patriotic citizens, unarmed, disputed 
the passage of armed troops through Baltimore to make war on 
the South. They fought guns with rocks gathered from the 
pavement. A few soldiers were wounded — some citizens were 
killed and many v/ere wounded. Some troops got through to 
Washington, while those in the rear were turned back. On the 
21st, Mr. Brown, Mayor of Baltimore, and other prominent 
citizens, at Lincoln's request, went to Washington. They went 
before the Cabinet in session, and Mayor Brown made a report 
in writing of what Lincoln said. The report, in part, was as 
follows: "The protection of Washington, he asseverated with 
great earnestness, was the sole object of concentrating troops 
there ; and he protested that none of the troops brought through 
Maryland were intended for any purpose hostile to the States, 
or aggressive as against the South. ' ' 

Cunning! Perfidy! There were no Confederate soldiers 
nearer Washington than Charleston, S. C. Why had he ordered 
the shipyard and ships at Norfolk and all property at Harper's 
Ferry to be burnt? But we will leave Lincoln to answer 
Lincoln. An army had been organized, and under command 
of Gen. B. F. Butler, on the 5th of May, it took military posses- 
sion of the Relay House near Baltimore, and held it until the 
13th, when he marched to Federal Ilill, and issued a brutal 
proclamation to the people of Baltimore, All manufacturers of 
arms and munitions of war were ordered to report to him. Thus 
within 21 days after Lincoln's solemn assurance to Mayor 
Brown of Maryland's security from any hostility, he planted 



TRITE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 363 

l\is heel upon her neck. One reflection here, before we proceed, 
is of great interest to statesmen and lawyers. Lincoln, by con- 
cession, was the agent of the States. His powers were crit- 
ically defined and expressly limited. Yet, through ignorance of 
law, or, far worse, through perfidy and despotism, he destroyed 
by fire property of the States at Norfolk and Harper's Ferry 
worth millions of dollars. For this, he could and should have 
been impeached. For this, a Congress of statesmen and patriots 
would have impeached him, and there would have been no war. 
But power in the hands of a fanatic, who, by the testimony of 
his intimate friends from boyhood, among whom was his Attor- 
ney General, James Speed, was afflicted with lunacy, acquires 
rapid and destructive momentum. That persistent melancholy 
mood observed by all, that constantly found a foil in dirty 
stories, and in reading Petroleum Nasby's exaggerations, was 
not then understood. 

Maryland's subjugation proceeded with furious celerity. 
Lincoln ordered Gen. Butler to disarm Baltimore. He obeyed 
and stored the arms in Fort LIcHenry. He then ordered Gen. 
Banks, successor in command to Butler, to arrest the marshal 
of Baltimore, and to imprison him in Fort McHenry. To this 
tyranny the Mayor and police officers entered a written protest. 
For that they — Charles Howard, Wm. H. Gatschell, Charles D. 
Hinks and John "W. Davis — were arrested and put in prison. A 
Provost Marshall then ruled Baltimore. This was done on July 
1st. The legislature met. A committee was appointed to whom 
was referred the appeal to the legislature of the imprisoned 
police commissioners. The Hon. S. Teacle Wallis, chairman, 
made the report for the committee, in which they appealed to 
the country and all parties to take warning from the usurpa- 
tions and to come to the rescue of Liberty and the Republic. 
Thereupon Gen. Banks sent his Provost-marshal to Frederick 
with an armed force, surrounded the town, and advancing on 
the legislature, arrested Wallis and a sufficient number of the 
legislature to break a quorum. Among them were Henry M. 
Warfield, Charles H. Pitts, Ross Winans, John Hanson, and F. 
Key Howard. Thus Avas the legislature suppressed. Henry 
Llay, a member of Congress from Maryland, was also arrested 



364 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

and imprisoned. From that day to the end of the war Mary- 
land was ruled by the military as Rome ruled a conquered 
province. 

Let us pause a moment to view this ruin wrought by a per- 
jured, brutal despot to gratify an insane ambition. Never had 
a tyrant wound around him such a net of falsehoods, inconsist- 
encies, contradictions, each and ail first dyed in blood. Mary- 
land had not seceded. She was a sovereign State in the Union. 
The only bond of that Union was the Constitution. Lincoln was 
the creature of that Constitution. Maryland was one of the 
thirteen States that made it. Lincoln had just sworn to support 
it. To avoid cavil, or possible dispute, we assume for the mo- 
ment that a State had no right to secede. That step Maryland 
had not attempted. Lincoln protested that his only purpose in 
calling for an army was to enforce the laws. Maryland had not 
resisted any federal law. Even in South Carolina there had 
been no resistance to any law. Lincoln had not attempted to 
enforce any federal law in Carolina. Fort Sumter had been 
taken by Carolina, but Maryland was no more a party to that 
act than was Massachusetts. Then what laAv was he trying to 
enforce in Maryland ? The police of Maryland had violated no 
federal law. They had tried to control the men who attacked 
the militia who had responded to his call. They picked up guna 
and baggage of the tfoops and gave them to the soldiers. By 
what law did Lincoln arrest and imprison the police, the police 
commissioners, the Mayor, the members of the legislature of 
Maryland, a member of Congress, and imprison them in Fort 
McHenry and Washington, and then send them to other prisons 
in the North? Yes; he was only enforcing the laws and 
had just sworn to support the Constitution, which told him: 
"The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be sus- 
pended unless when in eases of rebellion or invasion the public 
safety may require it." 

Was it chance or foreknowledge that determined Lincoln to 
select Benjamin F. Butler, a Puritan, and of Massachusetts, and 
a civilian, to tyrannize over Maryland? Did he not know his 
man? Was it chance or design that chose N. P. Banks, another 
Massachusetts Puritan, and a civilian, to succeed Butler to 
prolong that tyranny? The names of a few of the victims ar- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 365 

rested and imprisoned by these satraps of the despot, have been 
given, but they arrested ninety-seven leading citizens of Mary- 
land and put them in dungeons, without warrant, without 
definite charge, refusing to obey the writ of habeas corpus, and 
done on Lincoln's order alone. 

With a brief notice of but one incident illustrative of the 
inconceivable contrast between Maryland's condition in 1814 
and 1861 — only 47 years — we will pass on to survey a far wider 
field of like despotism. One of the noble sons of Maryland, thus 
imprisoned, was F. Key Howard, a grandson of Francis S. Key, 
the author of "The Star Spangled Banner." He shall tell his 
own story. In his experience called "Fourteen Months in 
American Bastilles," page 9, he writes: "When I looked out 
in the morning, I could not help being struck by an odd ana 
not plCcHsant coincidence. On that day forty-seven years before, 
my grandfather, Mr. F. S. Key, then prisoner on a British ship, 
had witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. When on 
the following morning the hostile fleet drew off, defeated, h& 
wrote the song so long popular throughout the country, the 
Star-Spangled Banner. As I stood upon the very scene of the 
conflict, I could not but contrast my position with his, forty- 
seven years before. The flag which he then so proudly hailed, 
I saw waving at the same place over the victims of as vulgar 
and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed." 

And the Puritans of New England, under Butler, were then 
regaling the ears of victims of their despotism in that Bastille 
with music of a brass band, that run to the words — 

"The Star-Spangled Banner! Oh! long may it wave, 
'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave. ' ' 
If, in travesty, mockery, derision, beastly inhumanity, there be 
another instance in history that approaches to this, it was when 
the poor of Paris, driven to desperation by hunger, appealed 
to Marie Antoinette in her royal palace for bread, and, with 
contempt and heartlessness, she answered: "Why don't the 
wretches eat cakes?" 



CHAPTER L. 
A SUPPOSED SOLILOQUY. 

We resume the review of Lincoln's cunning and treachery. 
The States delegated to Congress the exercise of their power 
to declare war, and that only against a foreign Power. Lincoln 
had no more power to declare war or to begin war than had 
his bootblack. And neither had Congress nor any other agent 
cf the States any right to make war on a State. We will see 
how cunningly he played his game to get his grasp on slavery. 
For four months of anxious waiting and watching he had 
played to gain his vantage ground. 

"How can I set on fire the Northern heart? The Union flag 
waving above 'The Star of the West' was fired on, and no third 
of vengeance was aroused. My followers are fanatics and fools. 
The intelligence, the conservation, the wealth of the North are 
all against me. What shall I do to justify me in turning loos3 
the dogs of war ? They hate me, call me ape — gorilla — gawk — 
giraffe — fool — Yes, I know I am 

'Not made to court an amorous looking glass. 
I am rudely stamped and want love's majesty — 
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, 
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature! 
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time 
Into this breathing world scarce half made up. ' 
"As I am subtle, false and treacherous, I — who now am 
clothed with the power of a giant — shall use it like a giant and 
a tyrant. I'll teach them who and what I am! I've tricked 
the rebels to fire on the flag, and the opening gun shall be 'ths 
knell that summons me to Heaven, or to Hell. ' If through seas 
of blood I wade triumphant to my crown, my ambition---my 
only Heaven — will be gained. Should I fail — the execrations, 
anathemas, fiery curses of betrayed mankind, shall be my por- 
tion. But — as this petty life is the be-all that ends with the 
grave — what matters it? As now I am jeered, hooted, scoffed, 
spurned, condemned ; am charged to be an infidel, because rea- 



TRUE VINDICATION OT THE SOUTH 367 

son demands that I call the Bible a fable and Christ a bastard; 
and pollution drips from my tongue as I talk — Hark! the can- 
non's roar! Now, for Ruin's reign! I'll set my squadrons in 
the field. Those blooming, fruitful fields I'll ravage. Those 
smiling, peaceful valleys, I'll sweep with destruction so com- 
plete, the birds of the air will perish. Those hills and plains 
I'll sow with blood so deep and bones so high they'll be my 
monument. Should discontent assail me in the rear, I'll kick 
the Constitution from my path, all legal process sweep aside, 
send judges with the habeas corpus, and all dissenters, to 
murky dungeons — to sweat and groan till the nation shall be 
cowed. To fire the Northern heart I'll veil my sworn intent, 
and cry : ' The Union is in Danger ! Come to the Rescue ! ' Then, 
when hot blood is flowing, when passion has blinded reason, 
and the cry of widows and orphans drowns the gentle voice of 
peace, and time an.d opportunity meet, I'll tear away my 
Mokanna veil, and proclaim Freedom for every slave. Then, 
servile insurrection, murder, and the torch will be my allies, to 
assail the rear while I mow down the front. 'All Hail! Thane 
of Cawdor I ' 

"Conscience? What is conscience to me? 'Tis true, wit- 
nessed by thousands, I pressed my lip on the skin of a butchered 
beast — the covering of a fable mocked by me — but I said not 
'So help me God,' that fetish, like the pillory, to force petty 
men to stand firm. The means, called tyranny, will sanctify 
my lofty aim when reached. The Constitution? What is that 
but paper? What care the shouting ring for the paper on the 
hoop, after the acrobat, bursting through it, lands upon his feet 
on the horse's back? Did not Seward — my premier — and his 
Higher Law dupes swear to support the Constitution? Did 
conscience hold them? How came I here, if not on the rabble's 
cry of a Higher Law? What is my conscience but that I ap- 
prove ? Nature is my God ! Sun, moon, stars, the ocean, rocks 
and trees — this whirling sphere of which I am and it of me — 
they have no conscience, but they do their appointed work. So 
must I. If a million of my legions bite the dust in this grand 
crusade they'll but anticipate their time of sweating and grop- 
ing through a few years more, to die unknown. Widows will 
wear sable, orphans will cry in vain, then curse me in bitter 



368 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

savagery ; but when the negroes are free and I have shaken off 
this mortal deformity, they'll forget murdered husbands and 
fathers, and shout hosannahs to my name. 

"The end sanctifies the means. Is proof needed? See my 
compatriot — John Brown. But yesterday hailed assassin ! mur- 
derer ! a demon — pitiless as a hungry tiger ! Today, a martyr, 
a patriot, a hero, sanctified by a scaffold and a hangman's rope. 
Ah! what a weather-vane — vacillating as the wind, dissolving 
as the clouds, now a weasel, now a camel, now a rushing, roar- 
ing tempest — is this human rabble, crawling between the colos- 
sal legs — huddled around the feet — of blind Destiny; shouting 
today 'Release unto us Barabbas, tomorrow joyfully singing as 
flames lick their quivering flesh, for a crucified, imaginary 
Savior ! 

' ' Should that Nemesis that, in visions by day and dreams by 
night, I, through a mysterious, unknown sense, have seen, felt, 
lurking behind me, in an unguarded moment, snuff out this 
light, the rabble that have uplifted me, hailing my tyranny as 
patriotism, will call me blessed martyr, and crown me with bay 
and laurels undying, till the cold insensate hand of History, 
digging beneath the rubbish of human laudation, as archaeolo- 
gists clear away the accumulated dust with which Time has 
slowly hidden deep some ancient ruin, shall upheave the pagan 
idol I so long have worshiped, and what they now praise as 
wisdom shall be found but the low cunning of the serpent." 

Whether presentiments of evil are of a disordered imagina- 
tion, or of neurotic conditions, or of aboriginal superstition, 
or insanity; or whether they may be inaudible whispers of 
warning by a guiding spirit hovering in the invisible world — 
we do not, and may never, know. But experience, our wisest 
counselor, has taught the truth that ''there are more things in 
Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy." 

Prom early manhood, Lincoln was possessed with the fear 
that a violent death awaited him. He could neither laugh, nor 
joke, nor reason it away. He often mentioned it to friends. As 
he bade them farew:ell, when leaving for Washington, he told 
his intimate friends he would not return alive. During the day 
of April 14th, 1865 — the day for Nemesis to arrive — he was 
unusually despondent and gloomy. He again repeated his pre- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 869 

sentiment. He was urged, against his wish, to attend Ford's 
Theatre that night. Leaving every one to his opinion, whether 
he believes in presentiments or assumes to scout them, still it is 
a coincidence that challenges the indurated skeptic, that just 
four years to the hour from signing his call — forbidden by the 
laws of God and man — for an army to shed his brothers' blood, 
he was summoned before the Throne of the God he had scoffed 
through life, to answer for that crime unparalleled in history. 



CHAPTER LI. 

TESTIMONY OF PERSONAL INTIMATES 

ABOUT LINCOLN. 

On the testimony of his law partner, W. H. Herndon, who 
knew Lincohi intimately twenty-four years, and of Ward H. 
Lamon, his biographer; of James H. Mathoney, Hon. John T. 
Stuart, Judge David Davis, Dr. C. H. Ray, Jesse W. Fell, New- 
ton Bateman, and others — all his intimate friends, and promi- 
nent citizens of Springfield, Illinois, as well as on the authority 
of his step-mother, Lincoln was an infidel, a fatalist, and at 
times an atheist. Herndon says: — "When a canrMSnfo for the 
legislature Lincoln was accused of being an infidel, if not an 
atheist, and of saying Christ was an illegitimate child, and he 
would not deny the charges. In his moments of gloom, he 
would doubt, if he did not sometimes deny God. In 1847, when 
a candidate for Congress, he was accused of being an infidel, 
if not an atheist, and he said he would die rather than deny it, 
because" says Herndon, **he knew it could and would be 
proved on him." 

Lamon says : "When Lincoln went to church at all, he went 
to mock, and came away to mimic." 

Mr. Bateman says: "Lincoln, learning just before the elec- 
tion in 1860 that only three of twenty-three ministers of the 
Gospel in Springfield, would vote for him, expressed surprise 
and drew out from his bosom the New Testament and said 'this 
is the rock on which I stand.' " Bateman expressed his sur- 
prise, and told Lincoln his friends were ignorant of his religious 
views. Lincoln answered quickly, "I know they are; I am 
obliged to appear different to them." Here is the wolf in 
sheep's clothing; all because his "overweening ambition" 
(Lamon) was ravenous for political office. 

Judge David Davis, whom Lincoln appointed U. S. Supreme 
Judge, says: "I knew the man so well — ^he was the most reti- 
cent, secretive man I ever saw, or expect to see. He had no 
faith, in the Christian sense of the term." 



TRUE VINDICATION 0¥ THE SOUTH 371 

Herndon says : * ' Lincoln never named Christ in writing or 
speaking. In writing to give consolation to his dying father, 
he would not name Christ. In a speech I wrote I used the 
word God. Lincoln made me strike it out. 

Stuart says: "I knew Mr. Lincoln when he first came here 
(Springfield, 1834), and for years afterwards. , He was an 
avowed and open infidel." 

Herndon, again, in writing to Lamon: "Lincoln was an 
infidel — atheist — was a fatalist, denied freedom of the Will. 
He wrote a book to prove, first, that the Bible was not God's 
revelation ; second, that Jesus was not the Son of God. I assert 
this on my own knowledge. Judge Logan, John T. Stuart, 
James H. Mathoney, and others will tell you the truth — will 
confirm what I say, Vvdth this exception — they all make it 
blacker." 

Lamon says, page 503, "If Lincoln did not believe in Chris- 
tianity, the masses of the 'plain people' did; and no one ever 
was more anxious to do 'whatsoever was of good report among 
men.' To qualify himself for office, he always appealed to the 
Christian's God either by laying his hand on the Gospels, or 
by some other invocation common among believers. Of course 
the ceremony was superfluous, for it imposed no religious obli- 
gation upon him." * * * His mind was readily impressed 
with the most absurd superstitions. * * * While it is 
very clear that Mr. Lincoln was at all times an infidel * * * 
it is also very clear that he was not at all times equally willing 
that everj^body should know it. He never offered to purge 
or recant, but he was a wily politician, and did not disdain to 
regulate his religious manifestations with some reference to 
his political interests." 

A friend of Lincoln, Samuel Hill, heard Lincoln read his 
book attacking the Christian's Faith, and Lincoln assured him 
he (Lincoln) intended to publish it. Hill snatched it from his 
hand and threw it in a red hot stove. Hill said he did that 
to prevent Lincoln from committing political suicide. 

Hon. John T. Stuart: "He was an avowed and open infidel. 
He went further against Christian beliefs and doctrine and 
principles than any man I ever heard ; he shocked me. The Rev. 
Dr. Smith tried to convert Lincoln from infidelity so late as 
1858, and couldn't do it." 



373 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Mathoney: ** Lincoln would come into the clerk's office 
where I and some young men were writing, and would bring 
the Bible with him ; would read a chapter and argue against it. 
Lincoln often, if not wholly, was an atheist ; at least bordering 
on it. He was enthusiastic in his infidelity. He told me he did 
write a book on infidelity." This is the book his friend. Hill, 
burnt. 

Lincoln's widow said: "Mr. Lincoln had no hope and no 
faith in the usual acceptance of those words." 

Mr. Speed, afterwards appointed Attorney General by Lin- 
coln, says (page 241, Lamon) : "Lincoln's derangement was 
nearly if not quite complete. We had to remove razors from 
his room, take away all knives and other dangerous things. 
It was terrible ! ' ' 

Mrs. Edwards, sister to Mary Todd, whom Lincoln jilted, 
says (page 240, Lamon) : "Lincoln and Mary were engaged; 
everything was ready and prepared for the marriage, even to 
the supper, Mr. Lincoln refused to meet his engagement. 
Cause — insanity. ' ' 

Herndon says: "Lincoln's religion was 'the Fatherhood 
of God and the Brotherhood of Man.' " That is not quite as 
high sounding as his "Universal Law," but it is as lucid and 
comprehensive as Parson Jasper's lecture on the Universe 
which he condensed into "De world do move." It is quite 
as efficacious as an iron life-preserver to a drowning man, and, 
for salvation, it is just as convincing as the old negro's plea 
of "not guilty, because I stole de pants fur to be baptize in." 
For its egotism, learning, and the self-complacency of profound 
ignorance, it finds a parallel in another negro preacher named 
John Marshall who was wont to scatter promiscuously his 
theology around Savannah just before Lincoln marched into 
Virginia to demonstrate a lunatic's idea of the "brotherhood 
of man" by murdering a million whites to give social equality 
to blacks. 

Old John, almost as conceited as Lincoln, announced sud- 
denly one day to his young master "dat dere aint enny part 
of the Scripture I can't expound." 

"I am glad to hear that, John. There is one word in the 
Scriptures I don't understand." 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 373 

"What's dat, Mars Charlton?" 

"John, the Scriptures say 'The firmament showeth his 
handiwork.' That word firmament has troubled my mind all 
my life. Tell me the meaning of that word, firmament." 

"Mars Charlton — as to de regards uv de furmurment — de 
furmurment, Mars Charlton, is a speehus (species) uv self- 
rightushness. Fur, (for) you know, in dem days, before de 
curation (creation) uv de world, when Pentecost was perse- 
cutin uv Paul an Silas in de wilderness — 

"Hold on, John! Pentecost was not born then." 

"Mars Charlton! You'se young yit. You dun no Pentecost 
in dem days was a growed-up man. Mars Charlton." 

"The Fatherhood of God!" Yes — and denied the fatherhood 
of the Father's "only begotten Son" by proclaiming that Son a 
bastard ! Enough of his fatherhood ! 

"The Brotherhod of Man!" If he meant that in responsi- 
bility to God every man stands on one level, and that each is 
under the same divine laws, and must stand or fall as he may 
obey or disobey those laws, then he was not in error. But 
that is not the creed of infidels, nor of men who deny punish- 
ment for disobedience of the laws of God. Did he deny that? 
Look at page 489 of Lamon, and read what Wm. H. Hannah 
says: "Since 1856, Lincoln told me that he was a kind of im- 
mortalist; that he never could bring himself to believe in 
eternal punishment. ' ' Herndon, in his letter to Lyman Abbott, 
who was gathering material for a biography of Lincoln, said: 
"Lincoln believed in no hell and no punishment in a future 
world." 

As the Old Testament is silent on future rewards and pun- 
ishments and the resurrection ; and as the New Testament rests 
solely on the teachings of Christ, and as Lincoln repudiated 
the divinity of Christ, and also denied that the Old Testament 
was inspired, and believed it was nothing more than Jewish 
history and the writings of men, we arrive at the conclusion 
that his faith had no more foundation than that of the Greeks 
and Romans who believed in Zeus or Jupiter as the Supreme 
God and ruler. The corollary to this conclusion is that, in 
Faith, Lincoln was a pagan. A pagan's conscience was indi- 
vidual, that is, it was to each and every man what he believed 



374 trup: vindication of the south 

to be right or wrong. Here we find the key to Lincoln's "over- 
weening," "intense," "inordinate" ambition; his expressed 
yearning for place and power and distinction. 

Herndon says: "Soon after the death of Mr, Lincoln, Dr. 
J. G. Holland came out to Illinois from his home in Massachu- 
setts to gather up material for a life of the dead President. 
The gentleman spent several days with me, and I gave him all 
the assistance that lay in my power. I felt sure that, even 
after my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln, I 
never fully knew and understood him, and I, therefore, won;- 
dered what sort of a description Dr. Holland, after interview- 
ing Lincoln's old-time friends, would make of his individual 
characteristics. When the book appeared he said this : ' The 
writer has conversed with multitudes of men who claimed to 
know Mr. Lincoln intimately; yet, there are not two of the 
whole number who agree in their estimate of him. The fact 
was that he rarely showed more than one aspect of himself to 
one man. He opened himself to men in different directions. To 
illustrate the effect of the peculiarity of Mr. Lincoln's inter- 
course with men it may be said that men who knew him 
through all his professional and political life offered opinions 
as diametrically opposite as these, viz : "that he was a very 
ambitious man, and that he was without a particle of ambition ; 
that he was one of the saddest men that ever lived, and that 
he was one of the jolliest men that ever lived; that he was 
very religious, but that he was not a Christian ; that he was a 
Christian, but did not know it ; that he was so far from being 
a religious man or a Christian that 'the less said upon that 
subject the better;' that he was the most cunning man in 
America, and that he had not a particle of cunning in him; 
that he had the strongest personal attachments, and that he 
had no personal attachments at all — only a general good feel- 
ing towards everybody ; that he was a man of indomitable will, 
and that he was a man almost without a will ; that he was a 
tj'-rant, and that he was the softest-hearted, most brotherly man 
that ever lived ; that he was remarkable for his pure-minded- 
ness, and that he was the foulest in his jests and stories of any 
man in the country ; that he was a witty man, and that he was 
only a retailer of the wit of others; that his apparent candor 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 375 

and fairness were only apparent, and that they were as real as 
his head and his hands ; that he was a boor, and that he was in 
all respects a gentleman; that he was a leader of the people, 
and that he was always led by the people; and that he was 
always susceptible of the strongest passions.' " 

J. B. Helm furnished a manucsript to Mr. Herndon. The 
incident here given is recorded on page 14 of Herndon 's 
''Lincoln." 

''The Hanks girls," narrates the latter, "were great at 
camp-meetings. I remember one in 1806. I will give you a 
scene, and if you will then read the books written on the sub- 
ject you may find some apology for the superstition that was 
said to be in Abe Lincoln's character. It was at a camp- 
meeting, as before said, when a general shout was about to 
commence. Preparations were being made ; a young lady in- 
vited me to stand on a bench by her side where we could see 
all over the altar. To the right a strong, athletic young man. 
about twenty-five years old, was being put in trim for the 
occasion, which was done by divesting him of all apparel ex- 
cept shirt and pants. On the left a young lady was being put 
in trim in the same manner, so that her clothes would not be in 
the way, and so that, when her combs flew out, her hair would 
go into graceful braides. She, too, was young — not more than 
twenty perhaps. The performance commenced about the same 
time by the young man on the right and the young lady on tbe 
left. Slowly and gracefully they worked their way towards 
the centre, singing, shouting, hugging and kissing, generally 
their oaati sex, until at last nearer and nearer they came. The 
centre of the altar was reached, and the two closed, with their 
arms around each other, the man singing and shouting at the 
top of his voice, 

' ' I have my Jesus in my arms 

Sweet as honey, strong as bacon ham." 

"Just at this moment the young lady holding to my arm 
whispered, 'They are to be married next week; her name is 
Hanks. ' 

"Hail Columbia, happy land. 

If you aint drunk I will be damned." 



376 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

The career of Abraham Lincoln is a paradox that baffles 
all understanding. It defies description. It beggars language. 
It makes fiction that curdles the blood of age, commonplace, and 
the dime novel a bore. It forces yawns over the pages of Rider 
Haggard, and elevates Munchausen to the dignity of a his- 
torian. It makes fraternity hypocrisy, and gives immortality 
to hate and execration. It turns the milk of human kindness 
into the discord of Hell. It gives to obscenity a passport to the 
drawing room. Its brutality throws a mellow light over the 
Duke of Alva, who, while butchering his foes, never, by starva- 
tion, murdered his friends. It furnishes to the lawless of every 
grade the plea of justification, under the "Higher Law," and 
the "law of public necessity." It crowns Guiteau — the assassin 
of Garfield — with the halo of martyrdom. It leaves no trace 
of Christianity but the one saying of Christ, "I come to bring 
the sword." By hiring slaves to kill their masters, it raises 
to the level of civilized warfare and of humanity the enlistment 
of Indians — one of the strongest counts in the indictment of 
King George III. by our forefathers. The contemplated mas- 
sacre to follow the Proclamation of Emancipation sinks the 
massacre of Huguenots on Bartholomew's Day by Charles IX, 
to the negligible incidents in a brawl on the streets of 
Verona between armed adherents of the houses of Montague 
and Capulet. It gives to John Brown the credit due to an hum- 
ble servant, who, without question, obeys the "Higher Law" of 
his master. The order to shoot and kill as traitors and spies all 
peaceable men tilling the soil to feed their babes, behind or 
within the lines of federal troops, brands the forehead of the 
Commander-in-Chief, who proclaimed to the world, in order to 
deceive Europe, that he was only trying to enforce the laws 
of the Union and to quell an insurrection, as the most infamous 
liar and the most brutal assassin in all history. The commander- 
in-Chief of millions of troops composed in part, as stated by 
one of his abettors, "of wretched vagabonds of depraved 
morals, disorderly, thievish, without self-respect or conscience," 
who, with bayonets drove defenseless and helpless women and 
children from their homes in Atlanta into the woods, burned 
their dwellings and all they owned, then cut a swath of ruin 
through Georgia by the torch, robbing all valuables, killing all 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 877 

cattle, hogs and horses they could not carry, spreading such 
desolation that women and children fought off starvation by 
picking from the dirt the few grains of corn his horses had 
slobbered over ; who, tramping through Carolina, robbed, burnt 
everything in his path that fire can destroy ; who, after days and 
nights of looting and rapine in Columbia, set the torch to and 
used that fair city as a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of 
smoke by day in his onward march of continued desolation — 
all these deeds of savagery just to quell an insurrection, — this 
hero has but one prototype. Nature unable to create such 
a monster, it required the unfettered genius and fertile imagin- 
ation of Milton to fashion him. This Arch-enemy of the human 
race — Anarch called by demons damned — shouted to Satan in 
his envious flight to compass the world in ruin — **Go! and 
speed ! Havoc, and spoil, and ruin, are my gain ! ' ' 



CHAPTER LII. 

NORTHERN FAITHLESSNESS AND 

LAWLESSNESS. 

We have traced the hostility of the North against the South 
from the first Congress in 1789, when petitions for the abolition 
of slavery began, to the culmination of the ferocity and madness 
of fanaticism v^rhen it repudiated the only bond that brought 
and held together the States of the Union. That bond was one 
of brotherhood. It was made by thirteen Sovereigns. We have 
read the reasons that induced those Sovereigns to form that 
Union. We know that the Union could not have been formed 
without a pledge of faith and honor to protect that species of 
property called slaves. That pledge was deliberately, solemnly 
given. That pledge Avas as deliberately and solemnly broken 
by a majority of the Northern States. It was broken by de- 
liberate and solemn legislation. It was broken thousands of 
times by organizations formed for the theft of Southern prop- 
erty and by mob violence on Northern soil. When that faith 
?.nd honor v/ere pledged, slavery existed in all the States. If 
it was "the spawn of Hell" the men who made that bond knew 
it as well as their wise children. Why did they not refuse then 
to protect it? As the Southern States refused to unite with the 
Northern States without that protection, why did the Northern 
States not refuse to be parties to the Union? It must be borne 
in mind steadfastly that the only obligation between the South 
and the North was that written agreement called the Constitu- 
tion. One of the several weaknesses in his debate with Calhoun 
Avas Webster's quibbling on the word Constitution. Had that 
instrument been gifted with articulate tongue it could have 
overwhelmed him while torturing it, by crying out — *'I am 
what I am ! I am what your fathers begat. My baptism did 
not change my nature, nor my speech. Baptize me Constitu- 
tion, or Covenant, or Compact, or Agreement, or Partnership — 
but my spirit, my soul, my voice, my thoughts, you cannot 
change." 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 379 

In 1833, Massachusetts, as usual, took the lead in the deeds 
of lawlessness that finally culminated in fratricidal war. In 
Boston, an anti-slavery society was formed with Arnold Buf- 
fum, a Quaker, as president, Boston was followed in 1833 by 
"The American Anti-slavery Society" in Philadelphia, Arthur 
Tappan, president. From that date other societies sprang up 
like shoots of asparagus. In the American Cyclopedia (head, 
"Slavery," page 712) compiled by two sons of New England, 
George Ripley and Charles A. Dana, we read that these socie- 
ties "by means of lectures, newspapers, tracts, public meetings' 
and petitions to Congress, produced an intense excitement 
throughout the country, the effects of which were soon mani- 
fest in the religious sects and political parties." In 1840, "The 
American and Foreign Anti-slavery Society," of mammoth pro- 
portions, took the field. In 1844 this society resolved that "the 
so-called compromises of the Constitution were immoral, and 
that it was wrong to swear to support the Constitution, or to 
hold office, or to vote under it." We see here, fanaticism in a 
spasm of Repudiation. Quoting still from the Cyclopedia we 
read : "From that time these abolitionists avowed it to be their 
object to effect a dissolution of the Union, and the organization 
of a Northern republic where no slavery should exist." Here 
is fanaticism advocating the doctrine that Lincoln denounced 
"as the essence of Anarchy"^ — Secession! In 1855 Boston 
moved up and again took the lead. She formed "The American 
Abolition Society" to promote the view that Congress had 
power to abolish slavery in every part of the Union. This was 
as sweeping as even Lincoln could desire. 

The Northern Churches then aroused and shook themselves. 
They organized the "Church Anti-slavery Society, to convince 
the Churches and ministers that slavery is a sin, and to induce 
them to take the lead in the work of abolition." Here we see 
religious fanaticism, checked by the Constitution, rushing on 
in another course and seizing hold of slavery to feed upon. By 
this time the entire atmosphere from Maine to the Pacific was 
a boiling, seething, roaring, leaping, forked-tongued flame of 
fanaticism. Now and then there were explosions, seen by the 
world; as when Henry Ward Beecher used his pulpit as an 
"auction pen," and acting as auctioneer, or slave trader, he 



880 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

sold to the highest bidder an escaped negro girl ; or when Rev. 
Theodore Parker converted his dwelling into a den for fugitive 
slaves and shipped them to England; or when Boston put on 
mourning and denied to the light of Heaven entrance to her 
holy dwellings, as the fugitive negro, Bums, was escorted to 
the ship ; and when the western Judge demanded to be shovna a 
title-deed signed and sealed by God Almighty; and when the 
Dred Scott decision of the United States Supreme Court 
dropped on the burning atmosphere. These and hundreds of 
other explosions occurred before the armed invasion of Virginia 
by John Brown was made and he was hanged. Fanaticism, so 
furious before, now, in a transport of rage and sacrilege, seized 
hold of the thief and hundred-fold murderer, and assassin, and 
raising him aloft in Beecher's Tabernacle and Faneuil Hall, 
cried — "Behold this murdered martyr! His death on the gal- 
lows has made it as holy as the cross was made by the cruci- 
fixion of Christ!" 

By this time at least 30,000 slaves had been stolen and 
rushed through to Canada, This estimate of the number is 
given by the two Abolitionists, Ripley and Dana, in their Cyclo- 
pedia, page 712, under "Slavery." The number stolen that 
were hidden in the States is not given, and will never be known. 
Still, the market value of the 30,000 at the fair average of 
$500.00 each, was $15,000,000. But the value of the property 
stolen and refused return "by the Northern nullifying Statutes 
called "Personal Liberty Laws" is a matter of small moment. 
The all important and the vital question was the perfidy and 
dishonor demonstrated by the lawless method of effecting the 
loss to the South. It was an unmistakable signal of danger to 
and destruction of three billions of her property ; of the ruin of 
her system of labor, and of the upheaval of her social order by 
turning loose four millions of semi-savages to prey upon her. 
We have had but a glimpse at the social, political and religious 
conditions throughout the Northern States up to the year 1860 
— the year when the hour and the man had come, the man who 
was to consummate what the fanatics had toiled and prayed 
for, and during sixty years had sacrificed their honor to accom- 
plish. And, let it be said, that no tool was ever better fashioned 
to effect a nefarious purpose than the one those raving devotees 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 381 

selected. There was method in their madness, and cunning in 
his method. Before he had worked out their design he held the 
poisoned chalice to their lips and forced them to drink of it. 
His despotism in the South had its counterpart in his tyranny 
over the North. His memory is immortal, for his enduring 
monument is built of the bones of a million men slaughtered at 
his command. He is remembered at the crack of every gun in 
the hands of his freedmen as a Saxon is murdered. He is re- 
membered when the wail of every woman in the deadly grip of 
a lustful freedman breaks on the air and appeals to Heaven. 
The tears wrung from the burning eyes of a million widows and 
orphans will keep in perpetual verdure his unforgotten grave. 
The aching sighs, the wailing sorrow, the moans of anguish, of 
a million mothers and daughters mingled in discord, will for- 
ever chant his requiem. 



CHAPTER LUI. 

RIOT OF LAWLESSNESS AND 

CORRUPTION— PROFIT AND 

LOSS OF THE WAR. 

We come now to the business side of the war waged by 
Lincoln for Abolition. To get a balance sheet we must add up 
the debit and the credit columns — then determine the profit or 
loss — the solvency or bankruptcy as the figures may testify. 
This is a gruesome task, but it is fit that the debtor shall make 
an exhibit to the creditor-world. The creditor has long since 
made his estimate. The Christian world has footed up its loss 
— in part. The moralist has approximated his loss. Widows 
and orphans have suflfered their incalculable loss. Cripples, 
with legs and arms left in ditches and trenches, or on mountain 
and plain, as meat for vultures, turn their sad eyes to the bat- 
tlefields as they limp and halt, stumble and fall — in hourly re- 
membrance of their loss. Mourners go about the streets, pro- 
claiming to the passer-by and idle loungers at doors and 
windows, in the mute eloquence of sable, what they have lost. 
But those are only fragmentary particles of the vast ruin scat- 
tered at our feet as the Temple fell. That we may reckon the 
magnitude of the ruin wrought by a Pagan Despot, we must 
draw near and view the foundation, the massive pillars, the 
architrave, shattered dome, broken arches, the Parian frieze, 
cornice, delicately chiseled tracery, its thirty-six separate regal 
chambers, all of one incomparable and unprecedented archi- 
tecture, in the touch of whose builders the wisest men claim to 
find genius inspired by a Spirit not of earth, each glorious in 
beauty and strength as the temple of Minerva. Let us drop all 
figurative speech, and leaving out of the calculation the minor 
items of dollars and cents, look only at millionary values. 

First, what is the gain? There is but one item. It is free- 
dom for the negroes. Who can estimate the value of that gain 
— even to the negro? Has freedom proved a blessing to the 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 383 

physical man? In slavery they were immune to the White 
Plague. As freemen, more die, by near two to one of the white 
race, of consumption, pneumonia, and of the numerous class of 
diseases that are caused and accelerated by exposure, dissipa- 
tion, drunkenness, fever, lack of clothing and proper nourish- 
ment, and of medical treatment and nursing. In Northern 
cities — Philadelphia for instance — a large percentage are circu- 
lating pestilence of venereal diseases that are destroying white 
and black. This is the result of social equality and of legalized 
and illicit miscegenation in all the Northern provinces, which, 
before Lincoln, were States or Nations. 

What of his morality? During slavery his natal African 
qualities, such as thievery and lust, were repressed — kept under 
control. Now they have full play. In slavery he was not known 
as a rapist. Now, he is a terror in every province, county, city 
and neighborhood — combining stealing, rape, lawlessness and 
murder. As a laborer — producer — the male is estimated, in the 
aggregate, at fifty per cent, of his efficiency as a slave; the 
women at much less. 

Those who worship Mammon point with exultation at the 
rapid accumulation of our billions as a marvelous and incal- 
culable gain. They are the materialists — ''the calculators" — 
denounced by Edmund Burke. "Of what worth is it to a man 
to giiin the whole world and lose his own soul?" What is the 
gain to a country where "wealth accumulates and men decay?" 
These Mammonites see no decay. There is no wand like a 
golden wand to dazzle the eye. In proof of their social pollu- 
tion, after a few lines of preface, we will throw on the canvas 
a moving picture of living scenes throughout the Northern 
States — beginning with the advent of their heroic saint, Abra- 
ham Lincoln — that may recall the leprous dungeon so graphic- 
ally depicted in "Ben Hur." 

From the first Congress, in 1789, to 1860, the government 
was in control of Whigs and Democrats — excepting two Feder- 
alist administrations. During those seventy years corruption 
in high federal stations was unknown. In the Southern States, 
from Governor down to the lowest office under the State, and 
in municipalities, personal honor obtained. When men in high 
places were abused, the provocation was political and not per- 



384 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

sonal dishonor. As already shown, throughout the Free States, 
for forty years, systematic theft by individuals, by men and 
women in organization, was openly carried on in sight of their 
children. What they stole was property. Their fathers and 
grandfathers sold negroes as property, and took the price — as 
of a horse, a house, or laud. Their children knew all that. 
They were housed, clothed, fed and educated by that blood 
money, and they knew it. Their children, witnesses to the 
theft, when arrived at the age of moral consciousness, remem- 
bered this lawlessness; and, as father and mother had by ex- 
ample taught them, they drew no broad line between what was 
property on opposite banks of the Ohio River, or on the two 
sides of an imaginary line dividing two States. The lesson by 
example is more impressive than by precept. The warning 
voice of the preacher pounding the pulpit is forgotten — ^yes, it 
is jeered and ridiculed — when he is caught secretly treading 
"the primrose path of dalliance." With these words, whose 
truth is blazoned on the pages of the Bible and so deeply rooted 
in human nature as to be known by the heathen, we proceed 
with the canvas. 

The Republicans — successors to and children of the Aboli- 
tionists who had stolen the negroes — came into full control of 
the federal government, and, of course, of its treasury, in March 
1861. In 1862 the revelry began — but unlike that "in Belgium's 
capital," it was not by night, and there was no audible sound. 
The ball was opened by the passage of a law to charter the 
Union and the Central Pacific Railroad Companies. From lack 
of space we must omit details and skip a year or two and come 
to the hilarity of the play. The corporators of the two Com- 
panies went back to Congress with the sad statement that they 
could not float their bonds, but that another financial agent 
could, provided Congress would pass a law authorizing the 
Secretary of the Treasury to indorse them. The financial agent 
paraded under the alluring foreign name of "The Credit Mob- 
ilier." The personnel of this many-headed foreign financial 
giant were not visible to Congress. The law was passed and the 
taxpayers were put in for $32,000,000 with interest for thirty 
years. Around the year 1871 a disgruntled grafter, who had 
not gotten his share of the swag, filed a Bill in Chancery in 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 385 

Philadelphia, in which he, as the modern political figure runs, 
"took off the lid" and gave the taxpayers a retrospect at their 
first Republican Congress. The revelation called for a spasm 
of Republican virtue. A committee of each House of Congress 
was appointed. Each committee caught some big fish in its net 
who were of each House. They unveiled the foreign Financial 
Agent and discovered the familiar faces of the few gentlemen 
who were the corporators of the two railroads. They were the 
great Credit Mobilier. They had sold the bonds to themselves. 

These Republican children of the parents — Abolitionists — 
who had stolen the negroes, had as Congressmen been buying 
from and selling to each other. The buyers — with noticeable 
instinct — selected a member of the House, a Puritan from 
Massachusetts, named Oakes Ames. Some preferred stock, 
some bonds, of the Companies ; and some, like Judas, preferred 
the jingling coin. One United States Senator, Wm. A. Patter- 
son of New Hampshire, was found in the net of Ames. The 
Senate Committee investigated the charge. He was so far im- 
plicated thnt he was called before the Committee in his own 
defense. Then followed a drama that is, probably, without a 
parallel in any deliberative body. Senator Patterson came be- 
fore the Committee and took a seat at the end of the long table 
opposite the Chairman — Senator Lott Morrill of Maine. The 
Chairman stated the charges, and then asked: "What say you 
to the charges?" Answer: "I am not guilty." Question: 
"You did not receive any valuable consideration for your vote 
as Senator on the passage of the bill for the Government to 
indorse the Pacific Railroad bonds?" 

Answer: "I did not." 

Question: "You received neither money, nor stock, nor 
bonds of those Companies, or either of them?" 

Answer: "I did not." 

"You are discharged. Senator, from further attendance on 
the Committee to-day," said the Chairman. 

Oakes Ames, was then called before the Committee. 

"Mr, Ames," said the Chairman, "Senator Patterson has 
sworn before the Committee that he received nothing of any 
kind for his vote on the Pacific-bonds Bill. Have you anything 
further to say?" 



386 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Ames's right hand dived down in his side coat-pocket, and 
that little deadly demon — a briber's memorandum book — rose 
at the touch of his fingers. He turned it affectionately, looked 
at it a moment, then handed it to the Chairman, who passed the 
little dumb witness to the other Senators. Patterson was 
again called in ; the Chairman passed the little assassin to Pat- 
terson and asked : 

"Senator Patterson, is that your signature?" 

Patterson glanced at the page and his eyes turned to the 
floor and his head slowly drooped forward. The Chairman, 
deeply moved by sympathy and distress, remained silent. Every 
eye in the room was riveted on the doomed man. At length, 
the Chairman, recovering again, asked; "Is that or is not that 
your signature?" 

Patterson neither replied, nor raised his head or eyes — 
"That will do, Senator. You can retire," said the Chairman. 
The Committee, within a few days, made their report to the 
Senate. Chairman Morrill said, in brief — 

"Your Committee, to whom was assigned the duty to inves- 
tigate certain charges against Wm. A. Patterson, a member of 
this Body, beg leave to report that, after a full examination 
of the evidence, they, by unanimous vote, have found Senator 
Patterson guilty. Painful as your Committee have felt the 
discharge of this duty to be, we are constrained to say that 
grievous as we hold the offense of bribery to be, we are com- 
pelled to report that we have found him guilty of a much 
graver crime. It is the crime of perjury committed by him 
when examined by your Committee." 

Senator Patterson's time of office would expire within two 
weeks from the date of the Report of guilty. Through pity and 
by common consent, it was agreed not to expel him, and to let 
the Report "lie on the table." Patterson was a Puritan. He 
had been a Professor in a College in New Hampshire, was a 
member of a Puritan Church or Congregation and was regarded 
by all, who thought they knew him, as an exemplary Christian. 

While this Republican investigation of Republicans was 
in progress another "lid blew off," and below was found an 
army of these children, who, by their old Fagin fathers, had 
been taught the fine art of stealing. To raise money to pay 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 887 

the deluded Northern soldiers who were told by Lincoln and 
Seward they were patriots and heroes, fighting to save the 
Union and their own freedom, Congress passed the Internal 
Revenue Law, which some, irreverent of Congress — dubbed the 
Infernal Revenue Law. The main product taxed by it was 
whiskey. The officers to collect the tax covered the land. They 
had not forgotten the teaching by their fathers, and they soon 
put it into practice. A combination was formed — that stretched 
nearly across the Continent — to steal the tax. It was branded, 
after discovery, "The "Whiskey Ring." As the North, and not 
the South, was the loser, an investigation was set on foot. It 
resulted in criminal prosecutions in the federal courts. Some 
were convicted, some fled, and some "got off." One, named 
McDonald, was sent to the pen, in Missouri, and while serving 
his term wrote a book as an expose of the "Ring." He believed 
he had been made a scape-goat by those who, equally guilty, had 
found "favor at Court" and had "got off." His exposure lays 
bare a prevalence of corruption in the patriots and heroes who 
saved the Union. Men in high places were after the coveted 
graft. The smell of whiskey was traced into the White House. 
Grant was President. He was not involved in the fraud — but 
one of his political family in the "White House was. It was of 
these prosecutions Grant said — "Let no guilty man escape." 

About the same date another small lid blew off. It covered 
the trifling sum of seven million dollars and was confined to 
Washington. Congress had made a large appropriation to be 
spent in and on the City. One Sheppard was at the head of 
the Municipality. He was called "Boss Sheppard." His brain 
evolved magnificent ideas and he planned a magnificent ex- 
penditure to extend streets, excavate and fill in — to plant trees 
—to pave and lay sidewalks. In some mysterious manner, by 
hook or by crook — or by crooks — seven million dollars disap- 
peared. A furious spasm of virtue seized the town. Even 
Congress was apparently indignant at the "blow off." A 
Committee was appointed to find the hole that had swallowed 
the taxpayers' money. Sheppard was notified to give his ex- 
perience, but before the Committee could arrange to hear it 
they learned that "Boss Sheppard" was in Mexico. There he 



388 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

managed — in some way unknown to gentlemen — in a strange 
land, without money or credit, to buy a large silver mine, which, 
it is reported, he worked to great profit. 

Schuyler Colfax, Vice-President of the United States under 
Grant, and, of course, President of the Senate, was discovered 
to be among those tainted statesmen. But he was not tried 
and punished. He was permitted to die "unwept, unhonored 
and unsung." * 

James G. Blaine, the Plumed Knight of the North, first a 
member of the House, then Speaker of the House; next a U. 
S. Senator, and afterwards the Eepublican nominee for Presi- 
dent, was caught M^th some valuable bonds obtained, it was 
alleged, while Speaker. He was the writer of the so-called 
"Mulligan letters," that he requested the friend to whom they 
were written to burn. But the friend neglected to do that favor, 
and the letters, in Blaine's campaign against Grover Cleveland 
in 1884, proved a millstone around his neck, and he sank to 
rise no more. It was during that campaign that Roscoe Conk- 
ling, ex-Senator from New York, when urged by Blaine's 
friends to stump the State of New York for him, informed them 
that he "had quit the criminal practice." 

In 1876 — the centenary of The Declaration of Independence, 
which is still revered by a few who observe it mournfully, as 
tender, loving hearts cherish the birthday of their beloved dead 
long after they have passed away — a U. S. Senator, Caldwell, 
of Kansas, was charged with bribery in buying his seat in the 
Senate. The proof was at hand, but he prudently and consid- 
erately, to save the Senate the formality and expense of an 
investigation, immediately forwarded by telegram, his resigna- 
tion to the Governor of Kansas, and silently stole away. Just 
before Caldwell's hegira, one Powell Clayton, a carpetbagger, 
who with his harpy cohorts had descended on Arkansas, and 
by a white, black and tan legislature, had been sent to the 
U. S. Senate, was accused by other carpetbaggers with buying 
his seat. The writer was the one Democrat of the Committee 
of investigation. The testimony was positive, but the Senate 
failed to give the required two-thirds vote. He was one of the 
patriots who had contributed an arm to the cause during Lin- 
coln's efi'ort "to suppress an insurrection" covering eleven 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 389 

States. This, at that time — (only 8 years after the skriraraage) 
was a certificate of good character throughout the North. One 
empty sleeve won the battle. Moreover, Clayton was a shrewd 
wire-puller, and was considered necessary to Republican domi- 
nation over Arkansas. When the Democrats drove him and his 
land pirates from office he was held in such affection that a 
Republican President and Senate sent him as Minister to 
Mexico. 



CHAPTER LIV. 

THIEVING, SWINDLING, BRIBERY, PER- 
JURY, AND GENERAL CORRUPTION 
RAMPANT IN THE "PARTY OF 
HIGH MORAL IDEAS." 

As soon as "the insurrection" extending over 789,568 square 
miles had been "suppressed," the conquerors, actuated by their 
own honesty, and, also, by love of the freedmen and a philan- 
thropic impulse to save them from robbery by the "Rebels," 
hastened to pass an Act in Congress to establish "The Freed- 
men 's Bureau." It was speedily organized over all the "Rebel 
States." Following Gen. Washington's patriotic example when 
he issued the order to "put none but Americans on guard to- 
night," the "Party of Moral Ideas" selected none but good men 
and true — all being Republicans, and, a fortiori, honest — to pro- 
tect their wards from robbery, or burglary of the Bureau by 
the "Rebels." Gen. 0. 0. Howard, one of Lincoln's choicest 
generals to "suppress the insurrection," and an exemplar in 
"Moral Ideas," as well as a shining Christian, was placed at 
the head of this Freedmen 's Bureau. A large brick building 
for headquarters was erected on F. Street, Washington, front- 
ing South, opposite the Treasury Department. Sambo and 
Diana, Hannibal and old Aunt Judy, Ctesar and Venus, Pom- 
pey and Priscilla, Scipio and Susannah — in short, all the African 
wards — were assembled and instructed to deposit their dollars, 
dimes and pennies in the thousand Freedmen 's Banks over the 
South for safe-keeping. They gladly obeyed, and all "went 
merry as a marriage bell" for a few years. 

One bright morning the whole North was apparently 
shocked by the announcement that "The Freedmen 's Bureau 
was dead broke." Millions of dollars had suddenly disap- 
peared — no one could tell how. The confiding wards were told, 
as an explanation, that the vast amount of their gold had 
knocked the bottom out of the Bank. While the negroes' pen- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 391 

nies were supposed to be safely cribbed, a negro college was 
built in Washington. It was christened "Howard" University 
— in honor of the General whose "Moral Ideas," so exalted, 
had induced the selection of the General to stand guard over 
the millions that were the hard-earned wealth of the wards he 
had risked his Christian life to free. A casual peep into the 
vaults of the Bank revealed the astonishing fact that a part of 
the negroes' money, over which he, like a Cherub with the 
flnming sword, had stood as sentinel, had been abstracted by 
his right hand, while his left, for a moment, held the flaming 
sword pointing at the "Rebels." But this trifling incident was 
passed over when the General, in his innocency, explained that 
he had only robbed Peter to pay Paul ; that is, he had made an 
equitable arrangement by having all the negro depositors make 
an involuntary contribution of their money to a select few of 
their kin, to be educated at Howard University, in Latin, Greek, 
trigonometry, infinitesimal calculus, differentials, conic sections 
and football. 

There is still another lofty peak to be observed, over which 
proudly flaunted the Puritan and Republican banner embla- 
zoned with their motto — "Moral Ideas." As this, also, was 
seen under Grant's Administration, it proves that after this 
Party of Moral Ideas got its hand on the helm of State there 
was no time lost in attending strictly to business. Another of 
Lincoln's mighty generals — Wm. W. Belknap — now steps into 
the limelight as Secretary of War under President Grant. After 
"the insurrection had been quelled," Lincoln's troops, except 
those who were left in the South to hold the Rebels down 
while the carpetbaggers went through their pockets, were sta- 
tioned in the West. Near each camp there was a store where 
soldiers could trade. The privilege of keeping that store was 
very valuable. The Secretary of War had the power to select 
the man — a civilian — for that position. The technical name 
was Post-tradership. It is against the law for the Secretary to 
sell that privilege. Belknap's wife, of extreme Western type, 
aspired to reign in Washington society — an easy victory with 
money, which she had not, but coveted. News reached Congress 
that Belknap had sold a number of Post-traderships. A com- 
mittee began to inquire into the facts. Belknap's friends sent 



393 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

a telegram, and he took the next train for Washington. He had 
a friend on the committee. He knew every step taken as soon 
as the committee adjourned. Several days passed. Belknap 
saw Grant, and they arranged for an escape. When the com- 
mittee was ready to make their report to the House, and before 
they could act, Belknap rushed to Grant with his resignation as 
Secretary written and ready. In less than a minute Grant had 
signed the acceptance of the resignation, and, thus, the founda- 
tion for escape through a technicality was laid. The impeach- 
ment however, proceeded. The facts were undeniable, but the 
brave soldier tried to get away by hiding under the skirt of his 
wife. She admitted that she negotiated the sales of the trader- 
ships. Here was a dilemma. A mighty hero who had com- 
manded a heterogeneous mass of human bipeds gathered from 
the corners of the earth to put down ' ' an insurrection by Saxon 
Rebels," some of whom were then judges to sit in judgment 
on him and strip the epaulettes and stars from his patriotic 
figure — "it would never do ! It must not — shall not — be done !" 
So his Republican allies filed the plea that the Senate had no 
jurisdiction to try him, because, a minute or more before the 
House had voted to impeach him, he had tendered his resigna- 
tion to President Grant and it had been accepted. With the 
facts indisputable the majority of the Senate (being Republi- 
cans), on this plea of lack of jurisdiction, would not find the 
accused guilty. The trick won. Truly it is a goodly sight to 
see brethren dwell together in unity! 

Thus far, under Profit and Loss, we have limited the view 
to a very small number, but they were criminals of the highest 
rank. They were trustees of the public — Vice-President, Sena- 
tors, candidate for President, cabinet ministers, generals, and 
custodians of the country's life-blood — money. Near the same 
period the country was shocked by another case of bribery and 
corruption. It involved the mayor, council and aldermen of 
New York City. Boss Tweed was the mayor and ring-leader. 
He was convicted. So were a few aldermen. 

It is impossible, from lack of space, to particularize in so 
wide a field of dishonor and corruption, stretching across the 
continent from Boston to San Francisco, and up into Oregon. 
Under the title of Theft and Larceny after Trust and Embezzle- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 393 

ment, a few of the names enlisted under these piratical flags 
will be given. No ! for the sake of their children, who should 
not suffer for the crimes of their fathers, the names will be 
omitted, and occurrences only given. 

The officers of the four big life insurance companies, after 
the investigation by the Armstrong Committee of New York, 
were convicted of stealing vast sums from their respective com- 
panies. Some fled to avoid conviction, some committed suicide 
and one remains in Europe — to avoid the penitentiary. The 
Enterprise Bank in Pennsylvania, by its officers completely 
looted, so that the Receiver reported that there was nothing 
left. Bank officers in New York City stealing the stockholders' 
money, and taking promissory notes from their messenger boys 
for large sums to represent that much good paper for loans. 

Another President of a New York bank embezzled the funds, 
and was convicted and sent to the pen, and used the money to 
bribe physicians to certify he was slowly dying by an incur- 
able disease, and on that ground secured a pardon. Now 
healthy and strong as a firedog. The President of a bank in 
Chicago looted it, was caught, convicted, and is serving his 
term in stripes, and is known, like Jean Valjean, by a number. 
The list could be extended into the hundreds. This we have 
not space to do. We must now take criminals in groups. 

Who could have imagined that the purest, the chastest, of 
all the provinces — the nation's conscience — the paragon of all 
perfections — Puritan Massachusetts, would ever be found among 
the fallen? When the wisest, the most virtuous, the exemplar 
in morality, ethics and virtue yields to the siren's voice, what 
can we expect from the weak, the ignorant, the uncultured and 
lowly? "If the righteous can scarcely be saved, where shall 
the ungodly appear? What "a good amendment — from pray- 
ing to purse-taking!" With this polished pillar in ruins before 
us, no tender heart can fail to feel compassion for her weak 
sisters and to invoke in their behalf the brilliant defense of Sir 
John Falstaff in his own cause. "Dost thou hear, Hal? Thou 
know'st in the state of innocency Adam fell; and what should 
poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy?" Yes, the legis- 
lature of Massachusetts was "taken in the act." But under a 
convenient shelter erected in that bailiwick— similar to the old 



394 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

English law called "taking sanctuary" — the guilty hastened to 
fly, and, by making confession on oath, they became immune 
to punishment. 

Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, so rotten for three 
decades under the guidance of Matt Quay — a leader of Repub- 
licans — that the women rose in rebellion, and with the aid of a 
few of the good men, elected a Reform Government. The 
thieves in charge of the water works were poisoning the inhab- 
itants, A few philanthropists induced an army engineer to 
resign from the army, to take charge of the engineering depart- 
ment — by guaranteeing a large salary for five years. But, two 
years after, the thieves routed the Reformers, and are again in 
the saddle. This brotherly love bears the stamp of the genuine 
Puritan and Lincoln coin, as negro men with white wives live 
in brotherly harmony in fashionable quarters — thus demon- 
strating the sublime exaltation of the Quakers over such petty 
trifles as social equality and the mixture of white and black 
blood. If there could be any one act to extenuate the cruel 
and bloody persecution of the Quakers by the Puritans it would 
be found in the tolerance by the Quakers of such degradation. 
"This is the house that Jack built." 

Then comes Pittsburg with a record of crime and corruption 
blacker than the soot that forms its perennial covering. A band 
of thieves was found wearing the disguise of Councilmen. They 
sold everything within their control, including themselves. It 
is needless to say they were Republicans — descendants of Lin- 
coln's patriots who fought to win glory for him as the Great 
Emancipator. Another glory due to the Republicans of this 
Quaker province under the Empire, blazed out in Harrisburgh 
— the Capital. Its flame lighted up the continent and all of 
Europe except Turkey, where its uneffectual light was paled by 
a perpetual counter illumination of like character. This typical 
Republican condition was discovered in the Capitol Building, 
in which architect, contractors, supply-men, decorators, experts 
in statuary, painters, furniture dealers, capitalists and treasurer 
— all joined in an attempt to rival the New England Puritans 
in piling up the Tariff. The only slight difference in morals 
was that the Puritans get Republican Congressmen to do the 
stealing, while the Republican State-house builders did their 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 896 

own stealing without employing a middleman. The result was 
the same — one by indirection, the other by direction without 
lying about it. "This is the house that Jack built." 

New York must not be overlooked. About twenty years 
ago a Eepublican legislature appropriated four million dollars 
to be expended in building a Capitol building at Albany. The 
work went bravely on. But, after the building was fairly 
started, "the funds gave out." Another appropriation had to 
be made. Several millions more were appropriated and, mar- 
velous to tell, after a little more work, in some mysterious way 
"the funds gave out." Still another appropriation, and again 
"the funds gave out." The last report, made public a few 
years ago, was that fourteen millions had been sunk in that 
building, and it was not finished. The Capitol at Washington 
— much larger — under a Democratic administration cost seven 
million dollars. This (Albany structure) is "the house that 
Jack built." 

Chicago followed suit and her trusted guardians began to 
rob their wards. Every device known to crooks was brought 
into play. They soon achieved for her the distinction of being 
"the wickedest city in the world." 

San Francisco, so far as the outside world knows, was late 
in the race, but when she arrived she demonstrated her skill 
in the game. Her mayor and the city's legal advisers were 
found in the lead. The city aldermen were grafters only sec- 
ond to her mayor and her legal counsel. The thieves caught 
had friends more zealous than discreet. One tried to assassi- 
nate the prosecuting attorney. He was shot and disabled to 
continue the trials, but he at length recovered. Graft, graft, 
was levied on every industry and occupation these thieves could 
reach. The mayor and city attorney are serving time in the 
penitentiary. 

In Georgia (a State — not a petty province like Massachu- 
setts) in 1889 one million dollars were appropriated to erect a 
State House at the Capitol. Five "Traitors," who had not 
fought under Lincoln, were appointed to superintend the work, 
to purchase material and to audit bills. When the contractors 
turned over the keys to those "Traitors" representing the 
State, of the one million dollars there was a balance left in the 



396 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

treasury. Those "Traitors" had not been taught by their 
parents and their teachers and preachers the art of stealing. 
This is not "the house that Jack built." They were not fanatics. 
With them Avarice was not an innate, ethnic passion. They 
were not Puritans. They were not Republicans. They had no 
parents and teachers and preachers and Beechers and Theodore 
Parkers and other Fagins, to set them the example. 

But this Republican corruption was so wide it is of little use 
to consume time on special instances. We will now take a 
glimpse at the mass, by noticing a few of the separate fields in 
which the different classes of criminals have operated. That 
the tariff has been the matrix of the wealth of this country no 
one whose opinion is entitled to consideration will deny. That 
this incalculable wealth has been cribbaged by only ten thou- 
sand of the 90,000,000 people is indisputable. That it has been 
thus gathered in by methods — whether or not allowed by law 
— that have been no higher than cheating and swindling, is 
another fact no one but the cheats and swindlers will deny. 
Only a few of these methods need be mentioned. 

The legalized gambling Exchanges in the large cities, the 
systematic wrecking of corporations, chiefly railroads, by the 
sandbag blow or by chloroform, or by the garrote. This method 
of killing is so gentle and skillful as to be classed with the fine 
Arts. The wreckers purchase a majority of the stock — thus 
getting the directorship — the property run down — pass divi- 
dends — buy the depreciated bonds — default on the interest — 
then foreclose, sell at a song — pay the price in the preferred 
bonds — wipe out all stockholders — and finish the steal made, 
according to law, by capitalizing the new organization at 3, 4 
or 6 times the original sum; sell the new bonds at par and a 
part of the stock, while holding the remainder as clear profit. 
On this 2, 4 or 6 hundred per cent, watered stock the public 
pays big dividends. 

Gold mines, silver, copper, iron, lead and coal mines ex- 
ploited by lying representatives to lure and then to rob con- 
fiding investors. 

Immensely valuable franchises secured by bribing legisla- 
tors and city councils and aldermen. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 397 

"There be land thieves and there be water thieves." Some 
Republican gentry have a weakness to be large land-owners. 
The public lands being reserved for settlers and only a quarter 
section, or 160 acres, being purchasable, and only on condition 
that the buyer occupy and build on it, the land thieves employ 
men to commit perjury in pre-empting land and then conveying 
it to them. Many million acres have thus been acquired. In 
this widespread thievery a United States Senator from Oregon 
and another from Kansas were caught. 

Under Republican rule Congress has established a banking 
system by which six men in Wall Street can within one day 
create a money panic. These philanthropists, in 1907, before 
the country had risen to its knees from the panic of 1903, con- 
spired to gulp a competitor, and to cripple it they started a 
panic by calling in loans. They then approached the White 
House, where was stabled the wildest unbroken Broncho in the 
land. They whispered some magic words in his ear that, for a 
minute, so tamed him, that they rode him so joyfully they con- 
sented to stop their own panic. They may, because they could, 
have whispered — "We have under our control the Black 
Plague. If you do not let us ride you, we intend to turn it 
loose on the whole people. If you let us ride you, we will be 
humane enough to let but a few people die." 

The Republican Congresses have been but machines in the 
hands of beneficiaries of the Tariff. Every one sat down in his 
velvet chair and calculated what per cent, he supposed the 
Northern patriots would stand. The "Rebels" were not con- 
sidered, as they were tied to the stake in 1865, and kicking by 
them was only amusement for these patriots. Each one would 
then step up and turn the crank, and his per cent., like chewing 
gum after the nickel is dropped in the slot, would drop out. 
The only shibboleth to pass the stream and get to the machine 
was to whisper the amount he had given to keep the machine 
oiled and running. Under this infamous system of highway 
robbery by what was called law, brother would drive brother 
to the wall and ruin him and his wife and children; or a few 
men, to keep down supply, would buy out competitors, or lease 
their plants for years, and close them; and after robbing the 
helpless millions in America these robbers would ship their sur- 



398 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

plus to distant lands, pay freight, commissions and port charges, 
and sell to foreigners cheaper than to the patriots and "Rebels" 
at home. 

But there are things in this life dearer than the Union. One 
is Justice. Another is Liberty. And the western patriots after 
having been lulled to sleep by the flattering tune of "Saviors 
of the Union," began to wake up and inquire whence came 
those soporific, dulcet strains. After forty years of this lullaby, 
they asked — "Did our fathers fight and die to establish a des- 
potism by Eastern millionaires — the most contemptible of all 
rulers — a moneyed aristocracy?" And they rose in their might 
in 1912 to get at this Juggernaut — this Congressional, auto- 
matic machine. In the fury of crying "Tyrant" they forgot for 
a few seconds the word — their old slogan — * ' Rebels. ' ' Ye gods ! 
— what agony they must have suffered — thus to lose all memory ! 



CHAPTER LV. 

THE SOCIAL LOSS. 

After the mere glance taken at the financial loss, we will 
take a brief view of the Social loss. Were it not for the vast 
difference in the peoples of the two distinct geographic divisions 
— the South and the North — the contrast in the social conditions 
of each would be amazing. A century ago the North was over- 
whelmingly Puritan, the South almost entirely Cavalier. Dur- 
ing and since the war the South was and is homogeneous, the 
North was and is essentially heterogeneous. The South was 
agricultural, the North was commercial and maritime — especial- 
ly in New England. The morals of the women of that section, 
before the war, is vividly portrayed by Dr. Sanger in his 
astounding book entitled ' ' History of Prostitution. ' ' What was 
terrible then is a hundred-fold worse now. It is needless to 
dwell on this single social status. It can be summed up in those 
three appalling words that but a few years past were assembled 
in such graphic horror — as if the medical world by unanimous 
voice were to diagnose an entire nation as dying from leprosy. 
Those triple Furies are — the "White Slave Trade." There was 
no pollution in the pagan world that approached, in shame, 
degradation, and power for national ruin, this deadly virus in 
the body of a Christian people. 

This — the social — loss by the war cannot be measured nor 
estimated. It was one of the mad dreams of the Abolitionists 
that the Southern men and women would sink under the burden 
bound on their backs by Emancipation. This expectation has 
turned to ashes on their lips. Self-absorbed — with noses to the 
ground, scenting for dollars — they never looked up to take the 
measure of the white man of the South. They could only see 
the negro. They turned the table on themselves when, in their 
madness, they chose the negro as their company. The negro, 
with all his cranial limitations, is a shrewd observer and reader 
of faces and character. In his subordinate position as a slave 
this talent was cultivated beyond that of the master. It was 
his protection from imposition. When the carpet-baggers 



400 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

swarmed through the South he read them at a glance. He knew 
they were of low origin. He had two standards for judging 
the quality of his deliverers — one was the rank and file of the 
army, the other, the carpetbaggers who succeeded the men with 
the guns. By them he judged the people who sent the soldiers 
to kill and the carpetbaggers to rob. As soon after freedom as 
they could gather enough to pay for transportation they sought 
the land where equality, political and social, would be their 
own. And they have not been disappointed. They have been 
received with open arms. There is no distinction. Race and 
color are no bar to society. All are brothers and sisters. The 
table of the rich is spread for the negro. The white man is 
just as much a gentleman as the negro. The white lady is on 
a par with the "colored lady," They sit together as cosily — 
chat as merrily — as if all were born in Africa. 

The three amendments to the Constitution, adopted for the 
special benefit of the negro, have turned, like the boomerang, 
to strike the heads that devised and the hands that projected 
them. The negro is not fastidious in choice of his residence. 
He does not object to snuggling by the side of or next door to 
a millionaire, and the millionaire must grin and endure it or 
move away. He has no objection to marrying a millionaire's 
daughter — especially of one who paid a Hessian a thousand 
dollars bounty to murder his neighbors while he sold shoddy 
supplies to the government and made his millions. "Why should 
not the negro show his gratitude by marrying the daughter? 
When his white friends pay big prices for a seat to see a negro 
pugilist beat up a white man, and the negro grows rich, why 
should he not spend a few thousands to ^ive his white friends 
the pleasure of his company and that d_ his white wife on the 
shore of Lake Geneva, and take a dip therein with them ? 

This is not the only blessing of the three negro amendments. 
They have reached out and are blessing far away Boston. There 
the negro demanded equality in a',i social gatherings, functions, 
and in conveyances at entertainments, in gymnasiums — in short, 
in any place his white equal can go. Having conquered the 
Whites in the society tilt, he has entered the field of business. 
He now demands of merchants, tradesmen and others in Boston 
who employ help that no distinction shall be made in color or 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 401 

race. If a white man is needed as a clerk, or salesman, the 
negro must not be given a positon as porter. He must be a 
salesman. The three negro amendments tell the merchants 
there must be no color line drawn — what is good for the goose 
is good for the gander — what is best for the white shall be given 
to the negro. The three negro amendments — the logical effect 
of Boston's crusade for abolition — ^are going back home to bless 
her as she delights to be blessed — that is, in loss of money. In 
1900 her exports amounted to $112,195,555. In 1912 her ex- 
ports amounted to $69,692,171 — a loss of 61 per cent. 

In 1900 Savannah's eports were $38,251,981. In 1912 Savan- 
nah's exports were $104,266,295 — a gain of 173 per cent. 

As New. England never fails to get what she wants, it is fair 
to presume she does not want any exports. As she worked 
furiously for fifty years, and fought for four years, for social 
equality with the negro, and as she got it, it is fair to presume 
that she desired it. This is another of her successive and un- 
broken line of triumphs. 

In the second chapter the names affixed to counties, towns 
and postoffices by the Puritans in Massachusetts were put in 
evidence to prove that they have little, if any, respect and rev- 
erence for their mighty ones of old. They either lack that 
pride of ancestry which prompts children of other nations to 
perpetuate the names of their glorious dead by association with 
inanimate objects, or they were sublimated above such sublun- 
ary artifice. This singularity of the Puritans is recalled because 
it seems to be progenitor to another phase of the same indiffer- 
ence to ancestry as well as to posterity. In this latter view is 
involved all the fanatics who swarmed out like bees from New 
England 's hive all over the West during sixty years before the 
Abolition War. 

The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Carthagenians, 
came in contact with the negro for thousands of years, (count- 
ing the Egyptians). They are glibly reckoned as Pagans. There 
may have been illicit admixture, to a small degree, of the negro 
with one or more of those nationalities. But they had laws to 
regulate marriage and by those laws marriage with negroes was 
not permitted. Pagans though they might have been — even 
though they were — ^yet they had that virtue, pride of race. They 



402 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

did not become mulattoized. Through wealth, the White 
Plague of Nations — followed by ease, luxury, indolence, dissipa- 
tion, individual flaccidity that became national (the tubercular 
symptoms) — they became degenerate and fell a prey to robust, 
younger neighbors. 

' ' There is the moral of all human tales, 
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past. 
First freedom, and then glory, when that fails, 
V/ealth, vice, corruption — barbarism at last. ' ' 
If there be any social condition more horrible, and demon- 
strative of a people's decay, than the White Slave Trade, it is 
to be found in the loss next to be considered. And that it is the 
legitimate offspring of Lincoln's insane ambition to involve the 
States in war, in order to reach his heart's desire — to be the 
Great Emancipator, his only chance to escape dumb oblivion — 
is as true as that religious fanaticism is remorseless, and is blind 
to consequences. This subject is the social condition in the 
North between the negro and the White races. In order to 
present this vital question in its true light, a brief retrospect 
will be helpful. 

There are but three distinct divisions of the human race — 
the White, Black and Brown. The White and Black are as dis- 
tinct as are the two miscalled colors — white and black. The 
Brown Race includes Mongols, Malays and Indians. Ethnolo- 
gists are not decided on even the difference in origin of these 
three divisions of the Brown. Recent devlopments by archae- 
ologists in the two Americas point to unity of the Indian with 
the other two divisions of the Brown, The geographic home 
of the White race has been in the territory known as Europe. 
The Aryans, Pelasgians, Assyrians, Jews, Medes, Persians, 
Greeks, Romans, and the nomadic tribes known as Goths, Visi- 
goths, Huns, — were all of the White Race. It is the only race 
of diversified individual types. Black eyes and black hair have 
uniformly and persistently marked the Black and Brown races. 
Physically, the White has been diversified in all the glory of 
the rainbow. Hair — the ornament that crowns the head — is 
black, near black, auburn, brown, chestnut, golden, flaxen, 
blonde, yellow, red. The eye — the mirror of the soul — is black, 
dark, hazel, brown, blue, gray, or with little isles of gray an- 
chored in a sea darkly, beautifully blue. 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 403 

This has been, from time immemorial, the conquering race. 
Its path has been progress. Its march has been steadily up- 
•ward — rising from the valley to the world's mountain peaks; 
conquerors not of men only, but of nature, subduing nature 
without, and making it contributory to man's physical wants, 
his pleasure, comfort and luxury; and, likewise, conquering 
himself — his natal ferocity, his wild appetite — cultivating and 
refining his crude justice, and as he rose he captured from his 
feathered companions their notes of joy floating in the air, the 
music and rhythm of the sea, and wove them into the rapturous 
melody of song. 

From the rushing, roaring, bloody drama of life he con- 
densed its essentials and unities and presented them to the eye 
to teach the living virtue, honor, refinement and philosophy. 
His is the only eye that God has endowed with appreciation of 
the Beautiful ; of the harmony of Nature. He alone with crea- 
tive vision sees the exquisite grace, the bewitching figure of a 
Venus, Minerva, or Galatea in the marble, and bids them come 
forth. His race alone has given birth to a Plato, an Aristotle, 
a Demosthenes, a Cicero, a Milton, a Shakespeare. From his 
race alone sprang an Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, Washington, 
Napoleon, Wellington and Lee. As explorers of the Universe 
the White Race alone can call the roll of the Immortals — 
Galileo, Newton, Herschel, and a thousand more scarcely less 
distinguished who have made the stars as familiar to us as 
household words. And this race in its wanderings for untold 
ages, has never, before the last century, debased its blood by 
marriage with a negro ! 

In the seventeenth century the Puritans and Portuguese, 
impelled by insatiable avarice, cast their hungry eyes over the 
earth to find a field for spoils. Darkest Africa — to use a sole- 
cism — loomed in sight. God, for a wise purpose unknown to 
but surmisable by man, had assigned a continent to the negro 
as his separate habitation. He had walled it in by Earth's wild- 
est and most forbidding desert, and by two vast oceans. The 
Puritans and Portuguese broke through the Western barrier, 
and for two hundred years the Atlantic's waves were fretted 
into foam by day, and illuminated by phosphorescence at night 
by hundreds of Puritan ships packed with negroes in chains, 



404 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

making for any port of least supply and greatest demand, to 
convert human flesh and blood into gold. During two hundred 
years? Yes, and longer. For, in 1830, standing on Plymouth 
Rock — that sesame that opened the door of Liberty to the Pil- 
grim Fathers in 1620 — Daniel Webster pointed to factories and 
furnaces where manacles and fetters were being forged for the 
hands and feet of African victims of Puritan avarice, waiting 
three thousand miles away, to be fed to trailing sharks or to be 
greeted on New England's shore by her flag proclaiming liberty 
and equality to all men. 

It was reserved for the New World, led by New England, 
to teach the Old World the advantage, lost by it for so many 
ages, of legalizing the commingling of the blood of a black 
negro and a woman of the White Race — to stock this "Nation" 
with an improved type. It has been truly and justly said by a 
wise man that he who is clothed with power to prevent crime, 
and stands by and sees a crime committed, is responsible for 
the crime. A people who have the power to enact laws to 
prevent the marriage of negroes and Whites, and refuse to pass 
the law, is guilty of the degradation of the woman and of the 
White Race. The Northern Pharisees — who make broad their 
phylacteries and say to the poor Publican, "I am better than 
thou," by that breath are sowing the winds. Let us reason 
awhile on this social condition. Laws are not to protect the 
strong. Their wisdom is based on the assumption that the strong 
can protect themselves. As a rule this is true. But reflection 
for a few moments will reveal its fallacy when applied to the 
subject now under consideration. 

The family is the unit in all societies, all States, all Nations. 
When the family, or unit, degenerates, the nation, or society, 
necessarily degenerates. The strongest nation is the one com- 
posed of the strongest units, or families. And the strongest 
units, or families are those held together by mutual affection, 
love, pride, and personal virtue and honor. In which race are 
found these threads that form the bond of family union — the 
White or the negro ? It is absurd to make a comparison. When 
these qualities belonging to the White Race are diluted one 
half by negro blood, the unit is weakened one-half and the 
nation in the same ratio. The Northern "provinces" are 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 406 

stocked with the most heterogeneous mass of humanity gath- 
ered together in any part of the earth. There are millions of 
immigrants who were little better than slaves; who had no 
social rank ; no pride of race, and who affiliate with negroes on 
perfect equality. To what that leads no one can be in doubt 
who knows the negro. 

Again: The danger to Northern society does not rest alone 
with immigrants. There are women and girls, of as white blood 
as the Northern Pharisees, who have been ground down by the 
heel of Avarice — of greed — to the depth of desperation. They 
are the class who are driven day and night in mills and fac- 
tories ; into serving in sweat dens until they have not the energy 
to sing Hood's *'Song of the Shirt." There are hundreds of 
thousands of shop girls pinched by poverty and starvation 
wages, who, after the day's grind, are forced to take the way 
that leads down to Hell. 



CHAPTER LVI. 

WHITE SUBJUGATION. 

The only item of profit (if such it be) is freedom for the 
negro. The next subject for review is the subjugation of the 
white race. The first field is the political. It is not necessary 
to enter the iron gate of Pandemonium that the Abolitionists 
established, from hatred and venom, over the South during the 
dictatorship of a mulatto woman, and called "Eeconstruction." 
That was but the dying gasp of the malicious foe that waged 
that unholy war. It was the wisp with which the Phillistines 
bound Samson. It was soon broken and the Southern white 
man was free, and has since held the position to which God 
assigned him. How is it in many of the Northern "provinces?" 
Is the negro, or the white man and the white woman under the 
yoke there? Let history answer. In eight or ten States the 
negro they freed holds the balance of power. After freedom 
they flocked to their friends where they could have the joy of 
social equality. And now, holding the balance of power in 
those States, and in at least 60 Congressional Districts, they 
crack the whip over the politicians' backs as Southern over- 
seers were privileged to do over the slaves. The closer the 
State, or the District, the more exacting and insolent the black 
suffragan becomes, and the higher the price to be paid for his 
vote. This condition did not and could not exist before Eman- 
cipation. In these cases, who is under the yoke — the negro or 
the white man? 

But this is not the worst fact that alarms the patriot. The 
moral aspect is the one that statesmen should consider. The 
politician thus obsessed to get office, must degrade himself. He 
sinks his manhood. He must buy his office. In no view is he 
more of a man than a candidate for the Senate who buys legis- 
latures. He takes his ignoble stand with Senator Lorrimer. If 
he does not feel his degradation he was self-abased beforehand. 
And he is a fit tool for the tribe of which Oakes Ames was a 
High Priest. The migration of the negro to the Northern 
"provinces" is rapidly on the increase. He is lured by social 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 407 

equality and there only he can find it. He is inexorable in his 
demands. Give him an inch and he will take a yard. He now 
holds the politicians in terror. There is not a gentleman among 
them who is willing for his wife or daughter to be rubbed by 
negroes in street-cars, in restaurants, hotels, theatres, or be 
locked in Pullman sleepers with them. And yet they have not 
the courage to advocate and to insist on separation of the negro 
from their families. Who is under the yoke — the negro or the 
white man? 

Scattered through the Northern "provinces" are weekly 
papers edited by negroes and supported by negrophilists and 
politcians, "for favors to come." There is hardly an issue of 
these parasites that is not a demand, directly or indirectly, for 
social equality. They hammer away at Jim Crow cars and at 
eveiy thin partition that obstructs them from rubbing against 
white men and women. And the white politicians dare not and 
the Northern white press will not notice this social incendiar- 
ism. Yfhen the stifling odor of the Jack Johnson miscegenation 
flooded the air of the continent — one white woman a suicide 
and another named Cameron in his clutch — these editors (?) — 
notably one in immaculate Boston — threw defiance at the white 
race for holding its nose because negroes and whites in the 
Northern "provinces" unite "in the Holy Bonds of Matri- 
mony," take their joyful bridal tours, enjoy their honeymoons, 
and then "settle down" to raise a crop of mulattoes — all done 
according to man's law up there in John Fiske's "provinces." 

Under Kepublican rule and its tariff there has been organ- 
ized a system of financial despotism unknown before in the his- 
tory of any kingdom, monarchy, autocracy, or empire. And 
this net, too, gradually, cunningly, secretly woven around 
90,000,000 people who boast of freedom and equal rights, by 
traitors chosen by their own ballots. Their selected agents have 
sold them into slavery. They are owned by Trusts, Monopolies, 
and Corporations — united in one great conspiracy to strip their 
victims down to poverty. And above and controlling and di- 
recting this band of unnumbered conspirators sUs the Banking 
Power with its throne in Wall Street. Yes, the patriots feed 
the negro, and now they wear the yoke a thousand times more 
galling to white men than slavery at any time and in any coun- 



408 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 



try was or could be to the negro race. When a disguised high- 
wayman meets a traveler and, holding a gun to his head, de- 
mands his money and takes it, he is called a robber, and in law- 
abiding England, when caught, he is hanged like a dog. When 
thousands of men wearing the disguises of Trusts, and the 
Tariff, combine their strength and rob the farmer while he 
sleeps — not of a purse, but of a quarter of his year's earnings 
— they, in America, are called gentlemen, and are "the Lord's 
anointed." 

One local loss by Emancipation no one will deny. It falls 
on New England — the first loss she has not been able to dodge 
since 1789. Being financial and self-inflicted, it is the hardest 
blow she could receive. Before she led the Abolition horde to 
put Lincoln in the saddle she was America's monopolist in spin- 
ning and weaving cotton. The South has taken from her, with- 
in twenty-five j^ears, nearly half of the millions she would have 
made by her mills. And within the next quarter-century this 
industry will be monopolized by the South. Already, the South 
consumes more bales than those six ''little provinces" in the 
Empire. Another loss to New England is her rural population. 
The "provinces" of New Hampshire and Vermont have been, 
to a large degree, deserted. Farm houses are decaying. Lands 
once occupied and productive are now returning to the wilder- 
ness. Eliminating Boston, which is one-third of Massachusetts, 
the congress representation of New England is as follows : 

Massachusetts 1789 — 8 

Maine 1810—7 

Connecticut 1789—5 

Rhode Island 1790—2 

New Hampshire 1789—3 

Vermont 1790—2 

Sic transit gloria "provinciarum 



n 1860- 


-10 


in 1910—16 


in 1860- 


- 5 


in 1910— 4 


in 1860- 


- 4 


in 1910— 5 


m 1860- 


- 2 


in 1910— 3 


m 1860- 


- 3 


in 1910— 2 


m 1860- 


- 3 


in 1910— 2 



CHAPTER LVn. 

JOHN BROWN— A BRIEF ESSAY ON A 

SMALL SUBJECT. 

L 

There are reckoned seven wonders of the world. All these 
are physical or material. The wonders in the mental, spiritual 
and psychic world have not been segregated and named, al- 
though they are much more numerous and interesting. It is my 
purpose to speak of one, only one, of the psychic wonders — 
the mastodon of all. It is this : That of ninety million people — 
two-thirds North and one-third South of an imaginary line — 
all professing the Christian religion, the same patriotism, speak- 
ing the same language, under the same laws, pretending to have 
the same pride of race, equal love of and devotion to their chil- 
dren, equal jealousy of good government, two-thirds North and 
one-third South of an imaginary line are diametrically opposed 
to each other on questions of the best government, on patriot- 
ism, rebellion, treason, morality, common decency, common hon- 
esty and personal honor. As will be shown, this difference is 
so wide, so shocking, that what on one side is lauded and hon- 
ored as patriotism, is denounced on the other as treason ; what 
is applauded with shouts and screams as philanthropy by one, 
is promptly punished by the other as common stealing; what 
is glorified on one side as an act approved by God, on the other 
side is adjudged, without a dissenting voice by even unethical 
negroes, as murder of the foulest type. What is memorialized 
by monuments in granite at the North is declared felony by 
white and black in the South — where its only monument is a 
temporary wooden gallows. 

Can there be a more astounding wonder than this? It is 
not only a wonder, not only a mystery, but it is dynamite 
bedded under the foundation of our government with an elec- 
tric fuse attached. Even on political economy the two sides 
are so far apart that, while one holds it to be their duty to 



410 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

support the federal government, the other indignantly demands 
that the government shall support them. To bring into full 
view this wonder in morality, character, religion, common 
decency and honesty, I shall cite and unfold but one instance, 
that of John (Osawatomie) Brown. In order to form a correct 
judgment on the right and wrong of the difference between 
these millions of people about this Brown, we must know some 
of his most prominent acts. I cannot soil this little essay with 
any more than a skeleton sketch of this saint, or demon, as he 
appears on one side or the other of an imaginary line. 

John Brown was, or is (as he is still marching on) a lineal 
descendant to the fifth generation of Peter Brown, a Puritan of 
the Mayflower flavor and vintage of 1620. He was born in 
Connecticut in May, 1800. In 1805 his father moved to and 
settled in Hudson, Ohio. There John grew up and learned the 
tanner's trade. He went back East, quit tanning and filled a 
little postoffice at Randolph, Pennsylvania. He then speculated 
in land and lost out. He next returned to Ohio (1840) and 
raised sheep and sold wool. His next resting place (if he ever 
rested at all) was in Springfield, Mass., in 1846. There he spec- 
ulated in wool again; offended New England manufacturers, 
who combined against him, and he migrated to London, Eng- 
land. There he lost the little gains he had. He returned to 
New York in 1849 and settled (if he ever settled anywhere) in 
North Elba, N. Y., and went into the wool business again. For 
ten years or more he had been what was called a "conductor" 
on one of the many "underground railroads" that were run 
from all the Southern States to Canada and that carried noth- 
ing but negro freight and returned empty in ballast for other 
freight. Brown did a business that extended from Massachu- 
setts to Iowa. There were thousands actively engaged with 
Brown in stealing — among them, as the biggest thieves, were 
Henry Ward Beecher and Theodore Parker, New England's 
highest priests. There was no competition ; the only opposition 
was a rivalry to have it decided who was the greatest thief. 

Brown married twice and had twenty children. In 1854 his 
five eldest sons left Ohio and went to Kansas. In 1855 their 
father joined them at Lawrence, Kansas. He gathered a band 
of thriftless "squatters" and boon companions and his work 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 411 

of death began. His fellow fanatics made him out a flesh-and- 
blood Galahad, for they record as history that **with 29 men 
he routed 500 Missouri ruffians" — one of the many terrible 
anathemas used then to describe every owner of slaves. He 
returned to Massachusetts to get money and guns to help save 
"Bleeding Kansas." After enough murders had been recorded 
to his credit to win the coveted title of Northern hero, he drilled 
a body of men to go to Virginia and seize a high mountain, to 
descend into the valleys, steal slaves, conceal them on the 
mountain and bill them through by underground railroad to 
Northern States and Canada. When the drilled men were told 
his plan they refused to go. He proposed then to seize Harper's 
Ferry and they refused to go. Brown then went to Chatham, 
Canada, assembled a few negro refugees, an English poet named 
Richard Eealf, another white man named J. H. Kagi (supposed 
to be son of the celebrated gambler in Washington, D. C), and 
called the motley crowd a Convention. They then adopted a 
Constitution for the government of the United States and 
formed a government by electing our hero, John Brown, Com- 
mander of the Army and Navy; Richard Realf, the poet, Sec- 
retary of State; J. H. Kagi, Secretary of War; and the Hon. 
Elder Monroe, a negro and a preacher. President of the United 
States. (The first and last negro President.) 

When we consider every disadvantage Brown labored under 
from birth (including his Puritan blood), his failure at every- 
thing he undertook — tanning, sheep raising, wool gathering, 
trading in wool, land speculation, his failure to conquer Vir- 
ginia with the strong aid of 20 men, including his negroes — and 
considering, also, that he was a model lunatic, it must be 
admitted by all good and unprejudiced judges that our negro- 
thief. Brown, came out of that Convention covered with all the 
glory his fellow lunatics could reasonably ask. At least, they 
— his fellow lunatics — found in Brown's constitutional Conven- 
tion, held in Canada, and in the election of officers, ample 
grounds for their — his fellow lunatics' — decision to erect a 
granite monument to Brown (in Boston, in the State of Massa- 
chusetts), and all they — ^his fellow lunatics — had to do to insure 
ample contributions to build this — the first monument ever 
erected in honor of a lunatic — was to preach a few lusty ser- 



412 TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 

mons portraying how John murdered men and boys in Kansas 
and slave owners in Missouri, and stole their slaves and run 
them into Canada, and to add, as the climax to his career, his 
magnificent invasion of the entire State of Virginia, which only 
failed for a dozen reasons, each of which was more 'than suffi- 
cient. And it really begins to appear, in the light of John 
Brown's birth and biography, his misdeeds and attempted 
deeds, that his fellow lunatics were justifiable, by kinship and 
affinity, in perpetuating his memory. 

In June, 1859, Brown changed his name to Smith, went to 
Virginia, said he wanted land to raise sheep. He stopped six 
miles from Harper's Ferry. Soon three of his sons joined him 
and other tramps straggled in as sheep raisers. With six 
negroes this band of assassins numbered twenty-two. They 
had brought and hidden guns and ammunition. On October 
16th they sneaked into the village of Harper's Ferry before 
dawn, surprised the watchmen at the arsenal, took possession, 
captured Col. Washington and imprisoned sixty citizens. Brown 
told passengers on a Baltimore train that passed at daylight 
that he had come "by authority of God Almighty to free the 
slaves." The Virginians gathered quickly. Col. Robert E. 
Lee, with a few soldiers was ordered from Washington to 
recover the Government's property. A battle ensued. Brown, 
having lost all but six men, took refuge in the engine room. 
The two sons were of the six. One son was killed ; the second, 
mortally wounded, fell. Brown knelt between their bodies, felt 
the pulse of the dying, and gave orders to the four survivors to 
"sell their bodies as dearly as possible." He was captured by 
Col. Robert E. Lee, duly tried as a murderer, convicted and 
hanged. 

The foregoing sketch of John Brown shows a small part of 
the record out of which the wonder grows. It is very meager, 
considering that over forty-five years were actually wasted in 
wandering, speculation, murder of slave-holders in Kansas, and 
stealing negroes. The last — murder and stealing negroes — 
might be called rightly his vocation; all other works his 
avocations. 

Stand on the boundary between Kansas and Missouri and 
listen to the opinions on John (Osawatomie) Brov^m, as ex- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 413 

pressed by the citizens of these two States; then proceed east- 
wardly to the line between Virginia and her eldest daughter, 
Ohio; speak of John Brown and Harper's Ferry, and note the 
battle of words that instantly begins. Move on into Pennsyl- 
vania and New York and note the rise in tone, the extravgant 
laudation of the nation's greatest hero. You imagine that 
Washington or Andrew Jackson or Grant is in the speaker's 
mind. Cross the Western border of New England and listen. 
What delightful harmony — what a happy family — on John 
Brown! No logomachy here! All exclaim: "What a won- 
derful man ! What a hero ! What a martyr ! He kissed a negro 
baby and marched right up to the gallows — didn't even wipe 
his lips!" And mingling with the dull hum of loom and spin- 
dles, breathing a sigh into the lessening swell of the lullaby, syn- 
chronous with the swing and ring of the anvil, beating time 
with the commingled multitudinous roar, crash and tumult of 
commerce, we hear from every hut, shop, shelter and rank, in 
droning, crooning moan — and almost monotone — 

"John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave, 
But his soul goes marching on. 
Glory ! Glory ! Hallelujah ! " 

Draw near to the center of all fanaticism, Abolitonism and 
Puritanism — Boston town — where alone American genius, un- 
sandaled, must repair to win a civic crown, or wither and perish 
in outer darkness, and you hear shouts of praise and glorifica- 
tion — "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!" belaboring the air in honor 
of John Brown, and you behold Faneuil Hall illumined like 
Solomon's Temple, in preparation to set Boston's seal of Deity 
on John Brown; and you see her High Priest, Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, rise and raise his holy hands, square his divinely 
illuminated countenance to the ceiling, and in tones of awe 
declare in words inspired by Mammon, and enmity to and 
hatred of the South — "The murder of John Bro-wm has made 
the gallows as sacred as the crucifixion of Christ made the 
Cross." 

It is not surprising that this new Divinity was first created 
and then discovered by New England, whence the Christ of 
the Trinity, in whose name and worship the Puritans persecuted 
and killed Quakers and women and children, was banished 



414 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOU TH 

near a century ago by many such spiritual tyrants and tinker- 
ers in creeds as Henry "W. Beecher and Theodore Parker, and 
where recently a woman — thrice married and once divorced, 
and a mother — made of the common clay of New Hampshire — 
was believed by many thousands to be immaculate and her body 
immortal. As, there, Christ has been rejected, not even an 
eyebrow was raised in wonder because John Brown was first 
recognized, then eulogized, panegyrized, then canonized and 
raised to a Deity. New England's process of reaching this con- 
clusion is plain: Christ, the Son, is the equal of God, the 
Father, and, of course, has all the attributes of the Father. It 
was the attributes of Deity that sanctified the Cross, therefore, 
as the hanging (or crucifixion) of John Brown sanctified the 
gallows as much as the Cross was sanctified, John Brown pos- 
sesed the attributes that Christ possessed. Boston selected her 
poet-priest, prophet and poet-philosopher to make proclamtion 
of her great discovery of a second Christ. 

The remainder of the story of John Brown's deification can 
be told in few words. Of course, all that could be done to the 
honor and glory of New England's newly discovered Deity 
was done promptly by his worshipers. The first thing was to 
compose a hymn devoted exclusively to the fresh Divinity. A 
genius was inspired — of course by the brand new little anthro- 
pomorphic God — to write up an account of him and what he 
was doing in the next world. And the inspired idiot began by 
assuring the friends and worshipers of their freshly molded 
Christ that "John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave." 

What a brutal consoler — especially as he was of the gentle, 
sensitive, mimosa strain called poet! To make a god, out of 
hand, and in one night, in Faneuil Hall, and to forget or neglect 
to pump omnipotence into him, or to screw wings on his shoul- 
ders, was an unpardonable oversight. On second thought it is 
clear that the poet was right. He knew more of New England's 
fresh find than the crowd that put it together knew. When 
he was selected as New England's poet laureate to compile a 
sacred hymn, when the divine afflatus struck him, he, if truth- 
ful, had to take things as he found them and sing John Brown's 
body buried in the ground just like common folks — deity or 
no deity. But the second line of this doleful hymn dedicated 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 415 

to New England's manufactured and therefore dearly beloved 
god, is an anomaly in poetry and logic. It is creative, and also 
iconoclastic. It denies New England's worshipful contention of 
Brown's Christship by denying his body's resurrection, and in 
the same breath by putting that old terrestrial vagrant and 
tramp on an eternal marching the instant he died. Think of a 
deity dead and his body **a-moldering''' and his soul starting 
out on an interminable tramp ! 

"But his soul goes marching on!" Marching on! Where 
is it going? The orthodox doctrine speaks of only two direc- 
tions a disembodied soul can take. One is to Heaven the other 
to Hell. On which road is this constitutional tramp marching? 
I do not mean by "Constitutional" that old effete paper that 
New England denounced "as a covenant with Death and an 
agreement with Hell." I mean a tramp from birth, by nature, 
a constitutional vagabond on sea and land, as a duck is by 
nature amphibious. The length of his journey, the time already 
elapsed since he started out, raise a painful doubt as to that 
soul's destination. We are told in a song by his fellow lunatics 
every day in many spots, from Maine to Alaska, that John 
Brown's "soul goes marching on." They have had it "march- 
ing on" more than fifty-two years by Shrewsbury clock. At 
three miles an hour as its pace, his worshipers have made that 
poor old lunatic march more than one million three hundred 
and sixty-six thousand, five hundred and sixty miles, a distance 
more than fifty-six times the circumference of the earth. Pic- 
ture the scene as sung so lovingly by three million white sol- 
diers, and by three hundred thousand negroes disguised in blue 
uniforms, "playing soldier" during the Aboliton War, and each 
one believing John Brown's soul was keeping step with him. 
What does that prolonged pilgrimage mean? That he was born 
a tramp and full of wanderlust; that he was descended from a 
Pilgrim, and came of a tribe of fanatics called "Pilgrim 
Fathers," does not explain this interminable tramp. Either all 
these worshipful singers are hoodooed or are the dupes of a 
cruel joke put on them by the lunatic who wrote this dismal 
hymn on Brown's soul (the equal in the North to Christ) ; or 
it is not on the road to Heaven, but is headed for a hot place 
he is trying to dodge. For this tramp is either voluntary or 



4 16 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

compulsory. If voluntary, could any one but a lunatic dawdle 
and fool away time on the way to Heaven? But the hymn as- 
sures us that "his soul is marching on!" He has not stopped 
a moment, no not even to kill a few Missouri ruffians and slave- 
holders, nor to set up his Constitution and Government for the 
United States, with his negro President. 

The first human to go to the Judgment Seat after death and 
return (to tell the tale to Socrates) was Er. One of the many 
differences between Er, the ancient, and John Brown, the 
modern wonderful traveler, is that Er told what he saw, and 
Brown, after marching more than fifty years, shows no symp- 
toms of returning. It seems that the second Fury has cursed 
him with wanderlust (the mark of a tramp), to continue for- 
ever. I base this view on the religious belief throughout the 
Northern States — and especially New England, as is sung in 
their worship of John Brown, their Second Christ — that his 
soul is still marching on in a tramp that began the second day 
of December, 1859. It would be a marvelous faith if held by a 
people who claim to be rational on most subjects, but it is not 
even surprising compared with belief in witchcraft and the 
faith that hanged Quakers. It is idle to make war on millions 
of people because they believe an absurdity in religion, especial- 
ly when a part of their sacred music is inspired by an absurd- 
ity; a people who have a monopoly on intelligence and are 
really rational on making money, who could and would believe 
John Brown the equal of Christ and who honor his holy name 
in sacred music, especially just because their greatest philoso- 
pher, poet and writer, , Ralph Waldo Emerson, proclaimed 
Brown the equal of Christ in the hour of his death on the 
gallows ; but we cannot forget their belief in witchcraft to the 
extent of committing murder to destroy it. 



CHAPTER LVm. 

JOHN BROWN— A BRIEF ESSAY ON A 

SMALL SUBJECT. 

n. 

The difference or rather one of a hundred differences be- 
tween Er, the ancient excursionist, and John Brown, the modern 
globe-trotter, is, that Er tells what he saw, and Brown can't 
tell what he has seen and sees. If he could he might explain 
his tardiness or truancy. Er says he reached the judgment seat 
in the twinkling of arv eye; saw the righteous justified and 
ascend to Heaven, and the wicked condemned and descend to 
Hell. If Er's soul reached its destination so quickly, why does 
the soul, of old John delay over fifty years. The reason is 
evidently he is not bound for the Kingdom of Glory, and that 
his father, the Devil, in consideration of his supremacy over all 
the earth as a thief and an assassin, has granted to Brown a 
special dispensation to pursue, for a season, his earthly voca- 
tion as a tramp. 

The first line of this most popular of death's-head hymns 
suggests that the hymnologist must have been of the tribe of 
Puritan historians, who, as a class, are the most perfidious be- 
trayers of truth in the world. For instance, this line assures us 
that John Brown's body, fifty years after he was hanged, is still 
"a-moldering in the grave." We have been told this marvel- 
ous fiction every hour in every day in every year for fifty 
years, in hut, or house, or palace, or dive, or bar-room, or 
theatre, or in Veterans' Camps strung from Portland to Port- 
land over the North. This strains credulity to the degree that 
it recoils and breaks. Though deified old John had been a 
tanner his hide would not have kept him "a-moldering" one 
year. But he was not a tanner. He learned that trade when a 
boy, but he bolted the guild, and took up with sheep and 
a-tramping. There may be some good, honest, truthful people 
in the back-woods of Vermont or Maine, who moan out this 



418 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

hymnal falsehood. They, poor souls, think this perpetual 
"a-moldering" is proof of Brown's immortality, whereas the 
truth is that John Brown's body, like great Caesar's long since 
turned to clay, may be feeding a flourishing apple tree, and 
his dust in the form of fruit may be shipped down South in 
the third or fourth class apples that come this way, and thus, 
old John, the negro thief, may at last, by mastication, be asso- 
ciating for the only time in his life with gentlemen and ladies 
— very much to his astonishment, discomfort and disgust, for 
it is reasonable to suppose that his social tastes were similar to 
Thomas "Wentworth Higginson's, who, a few years before his 
death, said that when he was a young man he always kept the 
best company, which he said was abolitionists and negroes. 
It may not be known by everybody that he was one of New 
England's great scholars and philosophers, who took great 
pride in stating that a great part of his activity in his early 
life was spent as a negro thief. 

In view of this almost certain transmigration from dust to 
fourth-class apples, the worshipers of the Prince of negro 
thieves — not excepting Theodore Parker, Garrison or Henry 
Ward Beecher — should amend the second line by striking out 
"soul" and inserting "dust," or better still— " dirt. " Both 
truth and science demand this correction. At any rate, it 
seems that the South shall never be rid of New England's sec- 
ond Christ. We met the assassin in Kansas; saw him next at 
Harper's Ferry; then we saw him hanged; we saw him buried; 
we have heard him preached; we have heard him sung; we 
have seen him perched on a monument ; we have seen him 
" a-moldering, " and now we are to chew and swallow him in 
homeopathic doses. 

There is a numerous class of Southerners who have no doubt 
that John Brown was an incurable lunatic. He was born under 
the curse of the Furies. He had to wear the bane of as calami- 
tous a heredity as ever fell to the lot of any man in a civilized 
age. He was not only a Puritan, but that blood had been dis- 
tilled and concentrated in him for five generations, without a 
break, before the landing at Plymouth Rock. Considering his 
inheritance of Puritan religious fanaticism and of mental and 
moral obliquity, his chance for sanity was comparable to that 



TRUE V INDICATION OF THE SOUTH 419 

of one's chance for health and longevity who is born the victim 
of leprosy, cancer and the white plague. One evidence of his 
mental limitation was the pride he felt in his Puritan stock. 
When a man boasts of a personal misfortune, or a hereditary 
calamity, he is either insane — pro tanto, at least ; or he is trying 
to lay the foundation for his defense by plea of lunacy for a 
crime he intends to commit. The latter was not true of Brown, 
for on his trial for the murder of a dozen or more Virginians 
he rebuked his counsel for attempting to plead insanity. His 
career indicates that he imagined he had a call from the Invis- 
ible World to do, by desperate daring, some terrible deed, so 
he would live in history as a hero and martyr. When the train 
for Baltimore passed Harper's Ferry early in the morning that 
Brown occupied that place, he told the passengers that he had 
come by divine direction to free the negroes in Virginia. He 
had no doubt read of Erostratus, who, to gain immortal fame, 
burned the temple of Diana. He saw that acquittal on the plea 
of lunacy would leave to him but a brief mention in history 
and pitying remembrance as a madman, a fool or an idiot who, 
with twenty-one men (six being negroes) atempted to conquer 
the State of Virginia. He won his fading laurels as a hero in 
a small region where heroes have never been plentiful except 
as conquerors among gamblers on the Exchange; and as a 
murderer he won the crov/n of martyrdom and exaltation to 
equality with Christ, on the gallows which, in the same region, 
had made "blessed martyrs" of so many Quakers, women and 
children. Every recorded act, from the age of twelve years to 
his invasion of Virginia, strongly supports the judgment of 
insanity. At twelve he expressed his horror and disgust for 
all that pertained to war, only because he saw some soldiers 
drilling in Ohio during the war with Great Britain in the year 
1812. 

I have said he was born under the curses of the Furies. He 
was as restless as a caged tiger in a circus. He had over twenty 
homes, or squatting spots. The range of his itinerary was 
wide, and, like himself, very erratic. It extended from Con- 
necticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ohio again. New York, Canada, 
where he established his Constitution and United States gov- 
ernment; then London, England; then New York, then four 



420 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

different spots in Kansas, New York again ; then in Virginia to 
raise sheep. Here is the curse of the Fury Alecto — "restless- 
ness — wanderlust." The two other curses — "Envy" and 
"Thirst for blood" — he put on exhibition from his majority, 
all through the Kansas war (so-called) down to his attack that 
Sunday night on the sleeping citizens of Virginia. When not 
engaged in assassination he gave the world proof of his decency, 
honesty and heroism by stealing negroes. 

It was impossible for a sane man to plan the seizure of a 
mountain in Virginia and to hold it as a permanent camp for 
runaway negroes. It was impossible for a sane man to call a 
convention of a few negroes and fewer whites in Canada, to 
adopt a Constitution and organize a government to rule the 
people of the United States. It was impossible for any one 
except a lunatic, abolitionist or Republican, in such a conven- 
tion, to elect a negro President oi the United States. It was 
impossible for any one but an idiot or a maniac to believe he 
could conquer the white race of Virginia with sixteen white 
men and six negroes. It was impossible for a sane man who 
loved his family to take three of his sons, who had families, 
to train them in the crimes of stealing and murder, and then 
lead them into a trap from which any sane man knew the only 
way out would be by a hangman's rope. 

Who can doubt now — fifty years after Brown's death — that 
he was a fanatic of the truest Puritan brand, a lunatic, a mono- 
maniac on negro slavery? It seems to be beyond the field of 
rationalism for any other view to be considered. If this judg- 
ment be sound, then it was the duty of the presiding Judge on 
Brown's trial to receive the plea of insanity, and of the jury 
to find him a lunatic, and, therefore incapable, in legal contem- 
plation, of committing murder. The Lunatic Asylum was his 
proper destination. He had won that goal by a laborious life 
of crime. The hanging was a judicial error, and, considering 
the time, its temper, and the general insanity on negro slavery 
that prevailed from Nova Scotia to the Pacific ocean, the 
hanging was also a political blunder. John Brown, the lunatic, 
immured in an asylum, would have been forgotten within a 
month; John Brown as a martyr to negro freedom was an 
inspiration to all the Abolitionists and fanatics at the North 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 421 

and to the federal army during the war. The song, "John 
Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave" and "his soul 
goes marching on," was the best substitute for courage the 
Northern armies could devise. 

I have given in a feeble way the extent and the intensity 
of the admiration of the worshipers of John Brown at the 
North. I will not attempt to give the language that expressed 
the Southern view of John Brown ; suffice it to say their curses 
cover him, as with a garment of many colors, from darkest 
sable to that of the sun; from Dante's deepest shades of the 
Inferno to the smoke, lava and flames of Vesuvius. The form, 
stature, body of these expressions were made up, in part, of 
"fanatic," "Puritan," "villain," "Negro-thief," "robber," 
"murderer of men and children," "assassin," and these, used 
as the spiritual limbs of John Brown, were clothed, garnished 
and embellished by verbal costumes thick and warm enough 
for a residence at the Arctic pole. And the pity of it is that 
every charge is true and all, except two ("Puritan" and "fan- 
atic"), were won by his own devilish diligence. "Puritan" and 
"fanatic" he was not responsible for, as he was born a Puritan 
and was by birth a fanatic, as his ancestors had been from the 
fifteenth century. 

That John Brown was a negro-thief for the last thirty years 
of his life, no one denies. To steal a slave from his master and 
run him into Canada was not branded stealing. It was philan- 
thropy, humanity, serving God. To creep at night upon white 
Southern men and boys and butcher them in their beds was 
not murder, it was philanthropy and humanity to the negro 
and done in the service of the Lord. To invade a sovereign 
State between midnight and dawn and shoot to death white 
men and boys at Harper's Ferry was not murder, assassination 
and treason. That act — that conduct — was the sublimest hero- 
ism; a sacrificial offering of himself and his sons to advance 
the cause of universal freedom. To head a posse in Kansas ; to 
pass into Missouri at night; overtake a master who was moving 
his slaves to Texas; to kill the master, seize his slaves, rush 
them into Kansas and thence to Canada, was not stealing and 
murder. Stealing? Murder? What? A devout, refined, 
wealthy, cultured, supremely educated, superlatively civilized 



423 TRUE VINDICATION 0¥ THE SOUTH 

people — Christian to anj^ degree of differentiation in creed or 
denomination that any sinner might call for at the bargain 
counter — to be guilty of the low, mean, hang-dog, plebeian 
crime of stealing ? Sir, it is impossible ! It is infamous even 
to think of it, Sir ! Well, we will discuss the ethics of stealing 
negroes and of murder at another time and in a different 
manner. 

The North and the South ! What a contrast — not geograph- 
ical — but ethnic, social, moral and religious! They meet, but 
do not mingle. They reside under the same roof, but, like man 
and wife estranged, each occupies a separate room. Like man 
and wife who have quarreled and parted, they speak on busi- 
ness, but nothing more. There is no subject from dolls to 
religion on which they agree. On economics they are foes, as 
much so as the highwaymen, Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard, 
and the travelers they robbed on Hounslow Heath. Communi- 
cation occurs only when one, peering over the partition, sees a 
big nugget — as a railroad, water-power, coal mine, iron mine, 
street franchise, and bribes the owner's servant to steal it; or 
when overloaded with protected wares he is hunting a market. 
While one is striving to keep pure the blood of the white race, 
the other has been striving for fifty years to force a mixture of 
white and negro blood. Such a condition never existed before 
in the history of the world. Here, indeed, is a wonder so great 
that it has the capacity of Aaron's rod ; it swallows all the seven 
and all other wonders. 

This New England Christ seems to have no appetite for 
Heaven. If he had, he could and would have been there the 
instant he was deified by the hangman's rope. His habits unfit 
him for celestial rest and society. There are no "Missouri 
ruffians" in heaven for this brutal New England Jesus Christ 
to murder or assassinate ; no negroes he can steal ; no wool to 
gather, neither on sheep nor negroes ; no United States Consti- 
tution and negro President to install ; no room for tramps. This 
monotonous tramp for fifty years is cruelty to animals. It is 
brutal to keep that old reprobate constantly on the go, day and 
night. Summer and Winter, without "food, water or candle 
light." There was sense and great military genius in keeping 
this holy buccaneer on the tramp for the four years of the 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 423 

Abolition War. It was to terrify and put to flight the "poor 
white trash" that were driven into the Confederate Army by 
the Southern aristocracy — the slaveholders. When the Cid — 
Spain's greatest cavalier — died, his body was mounted on his 
war-steed and marched at the head of the army. The dead Cid 
was more terrible to the enemy than the invincible living Cid. 
Think of the horrifying effect on the "ignorant, poor white 
trash" of the woods, of 

"John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave, 
But his soul goes marching on," 
when bawled, screeched, screamed, howled, roared by an army 
of three million negroes and whites, brothers in arms, and in 
sixty odd different languages and nearly all nationalities except 
the Simian and Gorilla, among which were Russian, Greek, Ger- 
man, Norwegian, Swedish, Lapland, Hungarian, Polish, Turk- 
ish, Syrian, Spanish, French, Austrian, Egyptian, Chinese, Goth, 
Hessian, Belgian, Dutch, Swiss, African, Italian, Sicilian, Cor- 
sican, Portuguese, Barbarian, Yiddish, Milesian, some Celt, 
English, a little Scotch and less American. With these tongues, 
guttural, sputteral, hissing, sizzing, roaring, the thunderous 
Babel was enough to scare a thousand Devils. The wonder is 
that the "poor white trash" of the South, who always easily 
won every battle when the odds against them was not more 
than two to one, did not use their heels for flight instead of 
their guns to fight. Think of this courage when even a repri- 
mand in guttural Russian alone would paralyze a Parlez-Vous, 
or a macaroni millionaire, who swears as well as prays in his 
soft liquid, bastard Latin. 

We have seen the man John Brown. We have proof given 
by strangers, friends, relatives, acquaintances, one relative 
under oath, and biographers, of his insanity. We have heard 
him talk. We have watched him on the tramp. We know 
enough of his record, his actions, for forty-five years to judge 
and to decide whether he was sane or insane. During his life 
he was pronounced insane by thousands, and sane by thousands. 
One of his kin made affidavit that Brown was a lunatic. James 
Redpath, his first biographer, tried to persuade himself of 
Brown's sanity, but he stated facts on which Brown's contem- 
poraries adjudged him insane. A few of his acts and sayings I 



424 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

have given. If we shall judge Brown by the rules applies to 
other individuals to test their sanity, there can not be a doubt 
that John Brown was by nature erratic from birth to his fortieth 
year, and from that last date he was, on the subject of negro 
slavery, an incurable monomaniac. He was so ignorant as to 
believe that the South was responsible for this slavery, and was 
so superstitious as to be convinced that God had called him to 
be His special agent to wipe out the great sin of slavery, and 
to slay the masters and owners if necessary. One of the infal- 
lible proofs of his lunacy is that without feeling the slightest 
animosity to any Southern man or woman, he felt it to be his 
duty under God's direction to free the negroes at once, even if 
he had to slay all Southern whites. Of the last statement Brown 
has supplied abundant proof by killing slave owners in Missouri 
whom he had never seen nor heard of, in order to take the slaves 
and send them to Canada; and, second, by his invasion of 
Virginia and killing any one who opposed his attempt to incite 
insurrection; and, third, by his repeated declaration during 
twenty years that he would kill any one who opposed him in 
freeing the slaves. 

I have now reached the last stage I had in view when I 
began these chapters on John Brown. My purpose was to con- 
sider the status of New England as emblazoned by herself in 
her relation to John Brown and the South. She has declared 
to the world and to all posterity that John Brown was not 
insane, was not a lunatic, was not a monomaniac, or she has 
advertised herself as the patron of a thief, murderer and assas- 
sin, by erecting a monument in honor of John Brown. New 
England is in this dilemma. If she deny that she intended to 
commemorate the lunacy of Brown and that she believed and 
believes he was not insane, then the North has honored with a 
monument this thousand-fold thief, murderer, assassin, and 
traitor, a man she knew to be a thief, a man who confessed 
that when a boy he stole from a young girl who was his 
mother's guest, a man who openly avowed that he cared noth- 
ing for law, the Constitution or the Acts of Congress, or human 
life when it stood in his way on his path as a negro-thief. 
When Wendell Phillips, at that date New England's most ef- 
fective orator, turned traitor to his country and gave sedition- 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 425 

ary and mutinous declaration, only because the Constitution 
guaranteed protection to property, he set the mob aflame 
against all law, organic and statute. State and federal. The 
Constitution being condemned as criminal, the fugitive slave 
statute was of course the work of the Devil. .New England in- 
dorsed Phillips 's mutiny against law, and thereby approved the 
mob and its furious attacks on the laws. 



CHAPTER LIX. 

"THE GREAT CONSPIRACY:" A ROLLICK- 
ING ROMANCE; BY JOHN A. LOGAN. 

I will devote a few remarks to one book that was ushered 
in, or out, much as a fighting bull of the highest Andalusian 
royal family enters the arena with head and tail high in the air. 
"The Great Conspiracy; Its Origin and History," is the title. 
After recovering from the shock it gives, the mind sees Catiline 
masqued and crouched, ready to spring upon the Senate; or 
Guy Fawkes concealed under the floor of Parliament with pow- 
der and fuse. The book is a rollicking romance, compiled by 
a modern Munchausen and fathered by General John A. Logan 
— his mausoleum, on whose portal is inscribed, out of the full- 
ness of his ignorance, the portentous title that roars so loud 
and thunders in the index. It has one merit. It has one of the 
charms of Madame de Montespan, or of the Duchess Valliere, — 
its attire is gorgeous ; Russia calf ; top, bottom and front gilded ; 
so richly adorned that one who knew the author well, and has 
often heard him speak, derives great pleasure from perusing 
the outside of his book. As beauty in women of some tribes in 
Africa is estimated by their obesity, this volume, there, would 
be a bewitching belle, as it is 810 folios fat. This charm is pro- 
hibitory to an investigator looking for reasons, because their 
number is in inverse ratio to the folios. The author, with good 
judgment, has enlisted other writers and speakers, and gives, 
fairly, the names, occasions and language. In this respect the 
contents are of some interest, but of little value. It was well 
to compose by proxy. 

The writer knew General Logan well, has heard him speak 
in the United States Senate many times, and he knows that the 
General was neither orator, writer, nor scholar. He uttered 
very many sentences that needed immediate repairs. He was 
very dark — swarthy — with hair straight, and black as a crow, 
and was reputed to be a quarter — or even half — Indian. Hia 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 427 

acquaintances called him "Black Jack." (There grows in the 
South a scrub oak called black jack, and Black Jack Logan, 
compared to a first-class Southern statesman, would be like a 
Southern black jack standing by a Sequoia of California.) He 
went to the House from a District in Illinois called "Egypt;" 
and afterwards to the Senate, with the most unsavory distinc- 
tion of first trying to raise a regiment in "Egypt" to fight for 
the South, and then being induced by promise of a commission 
to change front and join the federal army. I tell the tale that 
filled the air in Washington. If true, he should have been 
content with the immortal renown of commanding a corps 
under the President emeritus of the Ananias Club in his march 
through Georgia, so perilous to cattle, hogs and chickens. In 
justice to his memory I must state that in 1881 he made a state- 
ment in the Senate denying the charge. 

I have said he was not an orator. It may be I am not com- 
petent to judge. I base my statement, I might say risk my 
reputation as a critic, in part — a very small part — on what may 
have been eloquence in Egypt, Illinois, but which to my judg- 
ment and sensibility was not convincing. He never spoke 
without amputating sentences with a "hawk and a spit." The 
venerable and watchful Sergeant-at-Arms, Capt. Bassett, was 
always alert and watchful and ready with a Mercury-footed 
page to bear a capacious cuspidor. It is still an open question, 
whether that hyphenated oratory was to emphasize the logic, 
or to keep senators awake. But what boots it what a Southern 
Rebel, a Conspirator, a Traitor, thinks or believes, or does not 
believe of any of the heroic patriots and conquerors? Does not 
John A. Logan still live in stone and marble in the great White 
City of the plains? Does not William Lloyd Garrison from 
marble lips still denounce, in Boston, the Constitution as "a 
covenant with Death and an agreement with Hell?" And to 
emphasize the high honor thus conferred on them, has not the 
same class of discriminating worshipers erected a monument 
to a group of negroes, claimed by them as equals, on one of the 
cowpaths of Boston ? Verily, verily, let not those despair who, 
cribbed and confined in Northern lunatic asylums, dream they 
"dwell in marble halls," or that they are soaring heavenward 
in Elijah's chariot of fire; for outside are as arrant fools and 
lunatics as they. 



428 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

We will now pass through the gilded portals of this patriot 's 
mausoleum, adorned outside with twelve Crescents, signifying 
the Puritans' religious creed — "The Koran, or the Sword" — 
and hear what a Northern statesman and Savior of the Repub- 
lic has to say. Before "getting down to brass tacks" (see 
specimens of American oratory, North, under head of "Wm. H. 
Taft") in order to put the reader's mind "in a state of recep- 
tivity," I will state that this Northern General, wearing the 
rather feeble praise of being one of the ablest commanders in 
the Northern Army, devotes an entire chapter of 65 pages to 
the description of the battle of Bull Run, and concludes his 
narrative with the consoling sigh — "In point of fact, the battle 
of Bull Run — the first pitched battle of the war — was a drawn 
battle!!" 

He then explains, in the present tense, 24 years after the 
"drawn battle," as follows: "It is not fear that has got thd 
better of the Union troops. It is physical exhaustion, for one 
thing; it is thirst for another. Men must drink — even if they 
have thrown away their canteens — and many have 'retired' to 
get water. It is not fear, though some of them are panic- 
stricken; and as they catch sight of Stuart's mounted men — 
no black horse or uniform among them — they raise the cry of 
'The Black Horse Cavalry!— The Black Horse Cavalry!' " 

The man who can read this account of that "drawn battle" 
without having his sides to ache, is fit for nothing on earth but 
to be a professional mourner at funerals on half pay. "It is 
not fear I " " They are thirsty ! " " You know, men must drink, 
even if they have thrown away their canteens." "It is not 
fear!" They are only "panic-stricken," and as they cannot 
tell a white horse from a black horse, they just * ' retired to get 
water." Yes, Bj^ron had an opinion somewhat on that line: 
"Man, being reasonable, must get drunk — 
The best of life is but intoxication." 

Certainly, General ! You have got that battle down right. 
When a man, yes — any man — in a battle, is very thirsty, and 
also exhausted, and, besides, panic-stricken, but not at all 
afraid, and can't tell a black horse from a white horse, he has 
the right to "retire to get water" even if he has to "draw" 
the battle along with him ! What is the glory of victory to a 



TRUE VINDICATION OT THE SOUTH 429 

man panic-stricken, and so thirsty he can't see straight? That 
word "retire," under the circumstances, is a flash of genius. 
But it is like the one speech of ** Single-Speech" Hamilton — it 
was Logan's first and only flash. Still, it, like Hamilton's 
speech, is enough to give him fame, "He stands on a monu- 
ment and glory covers him. ' ' The glory, however, is very scant 
— like the dress of a Russian danseuese — it is too low above 
and too high below to be of much use in a gale. 

In the preface to this compilation, after assuring us that 
"while striving to be accurate, fair and just, the author has 
not thought it his duty to mince words, nor to refrain from 
calling things by their right names," he says: "While trac- 
ing the history of the Great Conspiracy from its obscure birth 
in the brooding brains of a f^w ambitious men of the earliest 
days of our Republic, through the subsequent years of its devo- 
lution" — (devolution is good — excellent; still, let's not com- 
plain — it might have been worse) — "down to the evil days of 
Nullification and to the bitter and bloody period of armed 
Rebellion, or contemplating it in its still more recent and, per- 
haps, more sinister development of today." Merciful Heaven! 
are the panic and thirst of Bull Run to be felt forever? What? 
Another Conspiracy in "brooding brains today" (1885)? Is 
the Cannon-Payne-Aldrich-Taft tariff the first "devolution" 
of it? 

But he winds up, at the end of the preface to this compila- 
tion, in a calm, Christian spirit. He magnanimously offers 
"forgiveness to all Conspirators and Rebels and Traitors, who, 
with manly candor, soldierly courage and true patriotism, have 
confessed the enormity of their offence in aid of the armed Re- 
bellion, and of the heresies and plottings in mad efforts to 
destroy the best government yet devised by man on this 
planet." My opinion is that this benediction with absolution 
attached has come too late, as the conspirators, rebels and 
traitors, if there were any of that class, are all dead; if not, 
they ought to be. Still the smallest of favors should be thank- 
fully received and in return (as he kindly says "If there be 
found within these covers aught which may seem harsh to those 
directly or indirectly, nearly, or remotelj'-, connected with that 
Conspiracy, he may not unfairly exclaim — 'Thou canst not say 



430 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUT H 

I did it' "), I forgive him, and will remember him merrily, for 
putting into this, his gilded mausoleum, as history, the infor- 
mation that the battle of Bull Run was a drawn battle. As he 
promised to be accurate and fair, I wish he had left a little 
memorandum explaining who or what is the "antecedent" of 
the pronoun "he" in the last quotation I gave, and who is to 
exclaim — "Thou canst not say I did it," and to say it "not 
unfairly. ' ' 

I give the foregoing as a sample of the contents of this com- 
pilation by one of the North 's greatest Generals and statesmen. 
This rating is not mine. His judgment of what a battle is, 
when it is "drawn" and why the Union troops retired to get 
water just at the moment when victory was assured, is not 
satisfactory. His report of Bull Run is too short. It stops 
before the "drawn battle" ended. It would be gratifying to 
know whether those thirsty patriots got water, if so, whether 
from Bull Run, or in Washington ; and also whether Bull Run 
was named after the battle, in honor of the Union army. Nor 
does he say whether the Union troops bivouacked that night' 
on the banks of Bull Run or "retired" to Washington to re- 
ceive an ovation and the congratulations of their Commander- 
in-Chief — Lincoln. 

Of the author as a scholar, writer, historian, and even as 
General might be inscribed on one portal of the mausoleum 
aforenamed — "Ex nihilo nihil fit," because of his opinion about 
the first battle of Manassas. Taking this opinion as a standard 
or sample, we are justified in applying to the entire romance 
another Latin maxim — "ex uno disce omnes" — from one sam- 
ple we know, the entire contents. Still, the book is a most 
effective compilation for any one who might be his vindictive 
enemy. 

On "Causes of Secession," he assigns as the chief cause 
conspiracy by Southern statesmen that began at the first ses- 
sion of the Congress under the Constitution. He dates it from 
the entrance into the Senate of Pierce Butler of South Carolina, 
who objected to an Impost Bill. He quotes from the diary of 
Senator Maclay of Pennsylvania, who calls Butler "a flaming 
meteor" and says "he scattered his remarks over the bill and 
threatened a dissolution of the Union." This Maclay is the 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 431 

astute observer, whose opinion of the New Englanders is 
quoted in an early chapter, which, liberally translated, reads: 
"They will rule or ruin." 

He has then to skip 44 years to find the next link in his 
chain of evidence to prove the South 's conspiracy. This link 
is the private letter of Andrew Jackson to Rev. A. J. Crawford, 
in 1833, abusing Calhoun whom he hated as only Jackson could 
hate. He next quotes from a private letter to an "Alabamian" 
(name not given) from Henry Clay, in 1844 (eleven years 
later), saying: "From developments now being made in South 
Carolina, it is perfectly manifest that a party exists in that 
State seeking a dissolution of the Union." This was a very 
languid "conspiracy," now 55 years of age. Carolinians are 
noted for quick action. He next quotes from a private letter 
by Nathan Appleton of Boston, written December 15th, 1860, 
(to whom is not stated) that he "had made up his mind from 
what occurred when he was in Congress in 1832-3, that Cal- 
houn, Hayne and McDuffie desired a separate confederacy as 
more favorable to the security of slave property. ' ' 

This great discoverer of a terrible mare 's nest — ' ' The Great 
Conspiracy" — is a careless historian and very nearsighted. 
Had he been diligent he would have found at least a dozen 
declarations by New England and her sons favoring disunion 
and secession during the period of his "Great Conspiracy" by 
South Carolina. But as we have been told a million times that 
Southern people are sluggards, lazy, indolent and white trash, 
whereas their enemies up North are quick on the trigger in 
everything, this accounts for New England's rapid movements 
to secede or to break up the Union. Her sprinting in this race 
of Conspirators has been accorded to her in a preceding chap- 
ter. The reader is requested to sit as a judge hearing a charge 
of treason, as set forth in these 800 pages about "The Great 
Conspiracy," and to bear in mind that the prosecutor searched 
all records, even including private letters, to sustain his charge. 
We need no other proof of this diligence than the size of his 
book, and our knowledge that any one under charge of being a 
renegade will leave no nook or corner unexplored to reinstate 
himself with his allies. What is the evidence so far adduced! 



433 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

First, that one South Carolinian, Pierce Butler, in opposing 
New England's tariff in the first Congress, threatened dissolu- 
tion of the Union. A "Great Conspiracy" by one hot-headed 
man ! And the evidence proves that if he did not cool off, he 
was conspiring alone for forty-four years! Any school-boy 
knows that "a. flaming meteor" could not burn that long. Then 
follow three private letters, the first, (Jackson's) in 1833; the 
second, (Clay's) in 1844, and the third, (Appleton's) in 1860 
— all relating to the supposed disunion sentiment in one State 
(South Carolina) and to one subject — Nullification. What 
were the other Southern States doing, thinking and saying 
during those 44 years? On this all-important link to show 
conspiracy in and of the South, this prosecutor is dumb. But 
history is not silent. They did not agree with South Carolina 
on Nullification ! And it is pertinent just here to state that so 
far from conspiring from 1789 to any other date, when the 
Compromise of 1850 was made in Congress the issue of Union 
or Disunion was raised North and South, and in the elections 
in 1851 every Southern State declared in lavor of the Union. 
This fact alone is a complete answer to "The Great 
Conspiracy." 

But we proceed with this prosecutor's evidence. The next 
is a speech by Francis Thomas, ex-Governor of Maryland, in 
October, 1861: "In substance, he said that twenty years ago, 
he, as a Representative, noticed one morning when he entered 
the House, that no Southern members were present. Hearing 
they were in caucus, he went to the caucus room and he found 
Governor Pickens of South Carolina — that little cock-sparrow — 
strutting about like a rooster around a barnyard coop, dis 
cussing the following Resolution: 'Resolved, that no member 
of Congress representing a Southern constituency shall again 
take his seat until a Resolution is passed satisfactory to the 
South on the subject of slavery.' He replied to Pickens and 
moved an adjournment sine die. Mr. Craig of Virginia sec- 
onded the motion and the company was broken up. We re- 
turned to the House and Mr. IngersoU of Pennsylvania, a glo- 
rious patriot, introduced a resolution which temporarily calmed 
the excitement. The caucus was held because Slade of Vermont 
had made an anti-slavery speech." Here is proof of "The 
Great Conspiracy." 



TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 433 

In reply to Thomas, the National Intelligencer, at Washing- 
ton, November 4th, (6 days after his speech) said: "We are 
able to state that at least three others besides himself 
(Thomas) went to the caucus with a purpose very different 
from any intention to consent to any treasonable measure. 
These were Henry A. Wise, Baillie Peyton and Wm. Cost 
Johnson. Had disunion, or revolt, or secession been proposed, 
he would have witnessed a scene not soon to be forgotten." 
This brings the proof of "The Great Conspiracy" down to 

1860, when his next evidence is the debate between Alexander 
H. Stephens and Kobert Toombs of Georgia on Secession. He 
follows this with a speech by Wigfall of Texas in Congress in 

1861, a speech by Andrew Johnson in Congress and one by 
McDougal of California in the Senate in 1862, in which they 
play the role of prophets "after the fact" of , Secession. This is 
enough of "The Great Conspiracy!" 

But it must be stated that in this chapter — "Causes of Se- 
cession" — the not very learned traducer nor very able lawyer 
gives some very valuable testimony in favor of Secession — the 
legal import of which he did not comprehend. The moving 
cause of Secession was the utter abandon of the Northern people 
on the right to and security of property. This condition 
in the North this nearsighted prosecutor gives by setting out 
the solemn legislation of many States to nullify the Constitu- 
tion. The enormity of this dishonor and breach of the bond of 
Union between the States, our author by proxy treats with 
levity, not to say gayety. He says and says it gravely and with 
an air of supreme authority over the whole question: "This 
may be as good a place as any other to say a few words touch- 
ing another alleged 'cause' of Secession. During the exciting 
period just prior to the breaking out of the great War of 
Rebellion" (one of his favorite vilifications) "the Slave-holding 
and Secession-nursing States of the South (another of his sweet 
morsels) "made a terrible hubbub over the Personal Liberty 
Bills of the Northern States" * • • "They constituted, as 
we now know, only a part of the mere pretext!" 

Then, to be perfectly fair, he says: "That the reader may 
quickly grasp not only the general nature but also the most 
important details of these laws in force in 1860 in many of the 



434 TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 

Free States, so frequently alluded to in the Debates in Con- 
gress, in speeches on the stump and in the fulminations of 
Seceding States, and their authorized agents, commissioners 
and representatives, it may be well now briefly to refer to 
them and to state that no such laws existed in California, Illi- 
nois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, Ohio and Oregon," 

The writer feels as if he belittles this great question in 
following the vagaries of the putative author of this book. An 
apology is due to the reader. It is like criticising boys on corn- 
stalks riding around the circus-ring after the circus is gone. 

What ground, he says, had the South to "fulminate" when 
the eight States he names had no law nullifying the Constitu- 
tion? If eighteen Northern States had that law — what of it? 
Note the important (?) fact that California and Oregon, two 
thousand miles away from the western border of slavery, had 
no such law. Then why complain? He names New York in 
the eight redeeming States, whereas New York passed the 
nullifying Act in 1840. Ohio had no such statute, he says. But 
she had mobs with such fury that over one fugitive slave the 
resistance to the Act of Congress was so alarming as to be 
called in history "The Ohio Rebellion." Such crass ignorance 
is inexcusable, but when barbed with malice and reeking with 
venom it is damnable. 

This pundit then gives the substance of the laws of the 
States that had defied the Constitution. As they have been 
given in a preceding chapter, but one statute of these rebellioua 
States will be quoted here as Logan states it. Take Vermont. 

"Vermont provided that no process under the fugitive slave 
law should be recognized by any of her courts*, officers or citi- 
zens; nor any aid given in arresting or removing any person 
claimed as a fugitive slave; it provided counsel for alleged 
fugitives; for the issue of habeas corpus and trial by jury of 
issues of fact between the parties; ordained freedom to all 
within the State who may have been held as slaves before com- 
ing to it, and prescribed heavy penalties for any attempt to 
return any such to slavery. A bill to repeal these laws, pro- 
posed November, 1860, in the Vermont House of Representa- 
tives, was beaten by two to one." 



TRUE VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH 435 

This statute was doubly revolutionary. It not only nulli- 
fied the Act of Congress, but it destroyed title to property 
guaranteed by the Constitution. It freed every slave as soon 
as he set foot on the soil of that State. "With these infamous 
laws before his eyes Logan saw nothing in them to justify even 
a complaint by the South. For the present it is sufficient to 
say that Daniel Webster, in 1851, declared they had broken the 
bond (the Constitution), and the South was no longer bound 
by it. 

So much valuable space would not have been given to 
Logan's vox et praeterea nihil — "The Great Conspiracy" — 
were he not held in such a high niche of Northern idolatry as 
to be saved from oblivion by a statue in Chicago. It is hard to 
believe that he submitted the contents of this book to the 
judgment of any judicious men who were his friends, for it is 
packed with falsehoods, and even with aspersions upon the 
character of some Northern men, one of whom — Stephen A. 
Douglas — as he tells us, after Secession was furious for war. 

He says that Douglas, during the notorious debate between 
him and Lincoln, in one speech — made not in joint debate — 
"declined to comment upon Lincoln's intimation of a conspiracy 
between Douglas, Pierce, Buchanan and Tane^^ (Chief Justice 
of the Supreme Court of the United States) for the passage 
of the Nebraska Bill, the rendition of the Dred Scott decision 
and the extension of slaver}^, but proceeded to dilate on the 
'uniformity' issue between himself and Lincoln, tersely sum- 
ming up with the statement that 'there is a distinct issue of 
principles — principles irreconcilable — between Mr. Lincoln and 
myself. He goes for consolidation and uniformity in our Gov- 
ernment. I go for the confederation of the Sovereign States 
under the Constitution, as our fathers made it, leaving each 
State to manage its own affairs and own internal institutions.' 
He then ridiculed Lincoln's proposed methods of securing a 
reversal of the decision in the Dred Scott case ; Lincoln having 
contended for an appeal to the people to elect a President 
who will appoint judges who will reverse the Dred Scott 
decision, which Douglas characterized as a proposition to make 
that court a corrupt, unscrupulous tool of the political party, 
and asked : 'When we refuse to abide by judicial decisions, what 



436 TRUE VINDICATION OP THE SOUTH 

protection is there left for life and property? To whom shall 
we appeal ? To mob law, to partisan caucuses, to town meetings, 
to revolution ? "Where is the remedy when you refuse obedience 
to the constituted authority?' " 

In that quotation from Douglas, this Lilliputian, Logan, 
gives a complete answer to all he has written in his dropsical 
book, 810 pages, endeavoring to fasten on the South the respon- 
sibility of the war, and whose main argument consists in 
hurling at the Southern States expressions, the meaning of 
which he did not know— "Rebel!"— "Rebellion!"— ''Trea- 
son ! "— " Traitors ! "— " Conspirators ! ' ' 

He quotes again from Mr. Douglas where he, Douglas, makes 
the charge directly against Lincoln to his face, to-wit: "Mr. 
Lincoln goes for a warfare upon the Supreme Court of the 
United States because of their judicial decisions in the Dred 
Scott case. I yield obedience to the decisions of that court — 
to the final determination of the highest tribunal known to 
our Constitution. He objects to the Dred Scott decision because 
it does not put the negro in the possession of the rights of 
citizenship on an equality with the white man. I am opposed to 
negro equality, I would extend to the negro and the Indian, 
and to all the dependent races, every right, and every privilege, 
and every immunity consistent with the safety and welfare of 
the "White races; but equality they sliould never have, either 
political or social, or in any other respect whatever. My friends, 
you see that the issues are distinctly drawn between Mr. Lincoln 
and myself." 

I will refrain from quoting further from this compilation 
evidently made and written by another, and dismiss it with the 
remark that if Hell is as full of liars as this vast volume is 
full of lies, no other sinners need apply, for there is not even 
standing room. A General commanding a corps in the Federal 
Army and supposed to know what is victory and defeat in a 
battle, and also suspected of being able to tell the truth, and 
yet who would call the battle of Bull Run, the first pitched 
battle of the war, a drawn battle — well, I suppose, that, as 
monuments go in the North to John Brown, Garrison, and 
negroes in Boston, Logan was equally worthy of his monument 
in Chicago. 



APPENDIX 

L 

LINCOLN'S LETTER TO MRS. BROWNING. 

"Springfield, April 1, 1838. 
"Dear Madam: — 

"Without apologizing for being egotistical, I shall make the 
history of so much of my life as has elapsed since I saw you, 
the subject of this letter. And, by the way, I now discover that, 
in order to give a full and intelligible account of the things 
I have done and suffered since I saw you, I shall necessarily 
have to relate some that happened before. 

"It was, then, in the autumn of 1836 that a married lady of 
my acquaintance and who was a great friend of mine, being 
about to pay a visit to her father and other relatives residing 
in Kentucky, proposed to me that on her return she would bring 
a sister of hers with her on condition that I would engage to 
become her brother-in-law with all convenient dispatch. I, of 
course, accepted the proposal, for you know I could not have 
done otherwise, had I really been averse to it; but privately, 
between you and me, I was most confoundedly well pleased with 
the project. I had seen the said sister some three years before, 
thought her intelligent and agreeable, and saw no good objection 
to plodding life through hand in hand with her. Time passed 
on, the lady took her journey, and in due time returned, sister 
in company sure enough. This astonished me a little ; for it 
appeared to me that her coming so readily showed that she 
was a trifle too willing"; but, on reflection, it occurred to me that 
she might have been prevailed on by her married sister to 
come, without anything concerning me ever having been men- 
tioned to her; and so I concluded that, if no other objection 
presented itself, I would consent to waive this. All this occurred 
to me on hearing of her arrival in the neighborhood ; for, be it 
remembered, I had not yet seen her, except about three years 
previous, as above mentioned. In a few days we had an inter- 



438 APPENDIX 



view; and, although I had seen her before, she did not look as 
my imagination had pictured her. I knew she was over-size, 
but she noAv appeared a fair match for Falstaff. I knew she 
was called an 'old maid,' and I felt no doubt of the truth of at 
least half of the appellation; but now, when I beheld her, I 
could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother; and this, 
not from withered features, for her skin was too full and fat 
to permit of its contracting into wrinkles, but from her want 
of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a 
kind of notion that ran in my head that nothing could have 
commenced at the size of infancy and reached her present bulk 
in less than thirty-five or forty years; and, in short, I was 
not at all pleased with her. But what could I do ? I had told 
her sister I would take her for better or for worse; and I 
made a point of honor and conscience in all things to stick to 
my word, especially if others had been induced to act on it, 
which in this case I had no doubt they had; for I was now 
fairly convinced that no other man on earth would have her, 
and hence the conclusion that they were bent on holding me 
to my bargain. 'Well,' thought I, 'I have said it, and, be the 
consequences what they may, it shall not be my fault if I fail 
to do it. ' At once I determined to consider her my wife ; and, 
this done, all my powers of discovery were put to work in 
search of perfections in her which might be fairly set off against 
her defects. I tried to imagine her handsome, which, but for 
her unfortunate corpulency, was actually true. Exclusive of 
this, no woman that I have ever seen has a finer face. I also 
tried to convince myself that the mind was much more to be 
valued than the person; and in this she was not inferior, as I 
could discover, to any with whom I had been acquainted. 

' ' Shortly after this, without coming to any positive under- 
standing with her, I set out for Vandalia, when and where you 
first saw me. During my stay there I had letters from her 
which did not change my opinion of either her intellect or inten- 
tion, but on the contrary confirmed it in both. 

"All this while, although I was fixed, 'firm as the surge- 
repelling rock,' in my resolution, I found I was continually 
repenting the rashness which had led me to make it. Through 
life, I have been in no bondage, either real or imaginary, from 



APPENDIX 439 



the thraldom of which I so much desired to be free. After my 
return home, I saw nothing to change my opinion of her in 
any particular. She was the same, and so was I. I now spent 
my time in planning how I might get along through life after 
my contemplated change of circumstances should have taken 
place, and how I might procrastinate the evil day for a time, 
which I really dreaded as much, perhaps more, than an Irishman 
does the halter. 

"After all my suffering upon this deeply interesting subject, 
here I am, wholly, unexpectedly, completely, out of the 
'scrape;' and now I want to know if you can guess how I got 
out of it — out, clear in every sense of the term; no violation 
of word, honor, or conscience. I don't believe you can guess, 
and so I might as well tell you at once. As the lawyer says, 
it was done in the manner following, to-wit: After I had 
delayed the matter as long as I thought I could in honor do 
(which, by the way, had brought me round into the last fall), 
I concluded I might as well bring it to a consummation without 
further delay; and so I mustered my resolution, and made the 
proposal to her direct; but, shocking to relate, she answered, 
No. At first I supposed she did it through an affectation of 
modesty, which I thought but ill became her under the peculiar 
circumstances of her case; but on my renewal of the charge, 
I found she repelled it with greater firmness than before. I 
tried it again and again, but with the same success, or rather 
with the same want of success. 

"I finally was forced to give it up; at which I very unex- 
pectedly found myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I 
was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hundred different ways. 
My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that I had 
been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at the same time 
never doubting that I understood them perfectly; and also 
that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody else 
would have, had actually rejected me with all my fancied 
greatness. And, to cap the whole, I then for the first time 
began to suspect that I was really a little in love with her. 
But let it all go. I'll try and outlive it. Others have been 
made fools of by the girls; but this can never with truth be 



440 APPENDIX 



said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool 
of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to 
think of marrying, and for this reason : I can never be satisfied 
with any one who would be blockhead enough to have me. 

' ' When you receive this, write me a long yarn about some- 
thing to amuse me. Give my respects to Mr. Browning. 

"Your sincere friend, 

**A. LINCOLN." 
"Mrs. O. H. Browning." 



n. 

A BACKWOODS WEDDING COMEDY 
STAGED BY LINCOLN. 

(FROM HERNDON'S "LIFE OF LINCOLN.") 

Lincoln had shrewdly persuaded some one who was on the 
inside at the infare to slip upstairs while the feasting was at 
its height and change the beds, which Mamma Grigsby had 
carefully arranged in advance. The transportation of beds 
produced a comedy of errors which gave Lincoln as much satis- 
faction and joy as the Grigsby household embarrassment and 
chagrin. 

"Now there was a man," begins this memorable chapter of 
backwoods lore, "whose name was Reuben, and the same was 
very great in substance; in horses and cattle and swine, and 
a very great household. It came to pass when the sons of 
Reuben grew up that they were desirous of taking to themselves 
wives, and being too well known as to honor in their own 
country they took a journey into a far country and there pro- 
cured for themselves wives. It came to pass also that when 
they were about to make the return home they sent a messenger 
before them to bear the tidings to their parents. These, enquir- 
ing of the messengers what time their sons and wives would 
come, made a great feast and called all their kinsmen and 
neighbors in and made great preparations. When the time drew 
nigh they sent out two men to meet the grooms and their 
brides with a trumpet to welcome them and to accompany them. 
When they came near unto the house of Reuben the father, 
the messenger came on before them and gave a shout, and the 
whole multitude ran out with shouts of joy and music, playing 
on all kinds of instruments. Some were playing on harps, 
some on viols, and some blowing on rams' horns. Some also 
were casting dust and ashes towards heaven, and chief among 
them all was Josiah, blowing his bugle and making sound so 
great the neighboring hills and valleys echoed with the resound- 
ing acclamation. When they had plaj^ed and their harps had 
sounded till the grooms and brides approached the gates, 



443 APPENDIX 



Reuben the father met them and welcomed them to his house. 
The wedding feast being now ready they were all invited to 
sit down to eat, placing the bridegrooms and their wives at 
each end of the table. Waiters were then appointed to serve 
and wait on the guests. When all had eaten and were full 
and merry they went out again and played and sung till night, 
and when they had made an end of feasting and rejoicing the 
multitude dispersed, each going to his own home. The family 
then took seats with their waiters to converse while prepara- 
tions were being made in an upper chamber for the brides and 
grooms to be conveyed to their beds. This being done the 
waiters took the two brides upstairs, placing one in a bed at 
the right hand of the stairs and the other on the left. The 
waiters came down, and Nancy, the mother, then gave direc- 
tions to the waiters of the bridegrooms, and they took them 
upstairs but placed them in the wrong beds. The waiters then 
all came downstairs. But the mother, being fearful of a mis- 
take, made enquiry of the waiters, and learning the true facts 
took the light and sprang upstairs. It came to pass she ran 
to one of the beds and exclaimed, *0 Lord, Reuben, you are in 
bed with the wrong wife.' The young men, both alarmed at 
this, sprang up out of bed and ran with such violence against 
each other they came near knocking each other down. The 
tumult gave evidence to those below that the mistake was cer- 
tain. At last they all came down and had a long conversation 
about who made the mistake, but it could not be decided. So 
endeth the chapter." 

The reader will readily discern that the waiters had been 
carefully drilled by Lincoln in advance for the parts they were 
to perform in this rather unique piece of backwoods comedy. 
He also improved the rare opportunity which presented itself 
of caricaturing "Blue Nose" Crawford, who had exacted of him 
such an extreme penalty for the damage done to his "Weems' 
Life of Washington." He is easily identified as " Josiah blowing 
his bugle." The latter was also the husband of my informant, 
Mrs. Elizabeth Crawford. 



m. 

SOME SEPARATE PARAGRAPHS ON 

THADDEUS STEVENS, LINCOLN, 

BEECHER, PARKER, AND 

JOHN BROWN. 

When Thad Stevens, branded a monster by Nature, coun- 
seled and ruled by a negro prostitute, was driving Congress 
with the lash to wrest the ballot from the Southern Whites, 
and to give it to their slaves, the perjury committed by Con- 
gressmen did not, for a moment, impair the right of the States 
to have exclusive control of the ballot. But the children of 
those perjured fathers are reaping the penalties of that sin. 

When Abraham Lincoln rode doAvn the Constitution he had 
just sworn to support, by invading Virginia with fire and 
sword, to conquer and to kill, that invulnerable instrument rose 
above him and his organized mob, as bright and legible as 
when it first illumined the western world. The direct result 
of that violation of his oath was the butchery of a million of 
his countrymen and women, and John Wilkes Booth's mad 
attempt to avenge the South. 

When Henry Ward Beecher lost the way to Heaven, and 
wandered off, "treading the primrose path of dalliance" with 
Elizabeth, the plighted consort of his parishoner, Theodore 
Tilton, he may have thought he had repealed the Seventh Com- 
mandment. But it is as omnipotent as when Moses received it 
on the Mount. It reached for the adulterer and brought him 
to judgment when Tilton sued him for wrecking his home. 
The jury, whose fellow feeling made them wondrous kind, made 
a mistrial, but the jury of the public said "guilty," unfrocked 
him, christened him "son of Belial," and left him in his Taber- 
nacle, a standing advertisement, every Sabbath, of the Com- 
mandment — "Thou shalt not commit adultery," They found 
him a virile hypocrite, and left him an evangelizing eunuch. 

When Theodore Parker — the founder of one of the many 
religions that have been hatched in that model incubator, 
Boston — made his home a den to hide negro thieves and stolen 



444 APPENDIX 



negroes, the Eighth Commandment — *'Thou shalt not steal" — 
blazed in his eyes, whenever he opened his Bible, with as fierce 
a flame as enveloped and consumed Achan for sitting on the 
stolen treasures in his tent and swearing he was not the thief. 
Theft is theft, and the Puritan preacher was as much a thief 
as if he had stolen his neighbor's hog. 

When John Brown, the bloody butcher, a vulgar imitator 
of Caligula, Nero and Domitian, was drenching the soil of 
Kansas with the blood of Christian children. Mount Sinai 
was thundering at him — ' ' Thou shalt not kill ! " If he had had 
ears to hear he would have heard — "He that lives by the sword 
shall die by the sword!" — "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by 
man shall his blood be shed ! ' ' But Puritan cocksureness 
deafened him; Puritan vice-gerency of God to rule the earth, 
blinded him, until, at length, divine justice laid its hand upon 
him, and made him sole actor in the last scene of the horrible 
tragedy in which he had played, with great eclat, the leading 
role, on the Northern stage, for thirty years. Laymen had 
shouted applause. Preachers had cheered him on. One, who 
ministered and performed Levitical sacrifices in the Tabernacle 
in Brooklyn, wherein the Ark of the Covenant had never rested, 
where the glory of the Shechina — witness to the presence of 
the Holy Spirit — had never shone — this high priest aided and 
abetted the assassin of children, by sending to this murderer a 
company armed with Sharpe's rifles bought by the preacher 
himself. But the hour had come for the curtain to fall, and 
for the tragedy to end. His last performance was on a trapeze, 
leaping tov/ard the ground with a rope around his neck, and 
stopping in mid-air. This conquest of the law of gravitation 
caused New England's greatest philosopher, Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, to proclaim that it made John Brown the equal of 
Jesus Christ. 



IV. 

DISUNION RESOLUTIONS AT WORCES- 
TER, MASSACHUSETTS. 

(Referred to on pa^e 218.) 

(FROM "FACTS AND SUGGESTIONS," BY DUFF GREEN.) 

At a meeting held in Worcester, Mass., just before the war 
(of 1861-65) the business committee submitted the following 
resolutions : 

"Resolved, That the meeting of a State disunion convention, 
attended by men of various parties and affinities, gives occasion 
for a new statement of principles and a new platform of action. 

"Resolved, That the cardinal American principle is now, as 
always, liberty; while the prominent fact is now, as always, 
slavery. 

"Resolved, That the conflict between this principle of 
liberty and this fact of slavery, has been the whole history of 
the nation for fifty years ; while the only result of this conflict 
has thus far been to strengthen both parties and prepare the 
way for a yet more desperate struggle. 

"Resolved, That in this emergency we can expect little or 
nothing from the South itself, because it too is sinking deeper 
into barbarism every year ; 

"Nor from a Supreme Court which is always ready to invent 
new securities for slaveholders; 

"Nor from a President elected almost solely by Southern 
votes ; 

' * Nor from a Senate which is permanently controlled by the 
slave power ; 

"Nor from a new House of Representatives which, in spite 
of our agitation, will be more pro-slavery than the present one, 
though the present one has at length granted all which slavery 
asked ; 

"Nor from political action, as now conducted. For the 
Republican leaders and press freely admitted, in public and 
private, that the election of Fremont was, politically speaking, 



446 APPENDIX 



'the last hope of freedom,' and even could the North east a 
united vote in 1860, the South was before it four years of 
annexation previous to that time. 

"Resolved, That the fundamental difference between mere 
political agitation and the action we propose is this, that the 
one requires the acquiescence of the slave power, and the other 
only its opposition. 

''Resolved, That the necessity for disunion is written in the 
whole existing character and condition of the two sections of 
the country — in their social organization, education, habits, and 
laws — in the dangers of our white citizens in Kansas, and of our 
colored ones in Boston — in the wounds of Charles Sumner and 
the laurels of his assailant — and no government on earth was 
ever strong enough to hold together such opposing forces. 

"Resolved, That this movement does not seek merely dis- 
union, but the more perfect union of the free States by the 
expulsion of the slave States from the confederation, in which 
they have ever been an element of discord, danger and disgrace. 

"Resolved, That it is not probable that the ultimate sev- 
erance of the Union will be an act of deliberation or discussion, 
but that a long period of deliberation and discussion must 
precede it, and this we meet to begin. 

"Resolved, That henceforward, instead of regarding it as 
an objection to any system of policy, that it will lead to the 
separation of the States, we will proclaim that to be the highest 
of all recommendations, and the grateful proof of statesman- 
ship ; and will support, politically, or otherwise, such men and 
measures as appear to tend most to this result. 

"Resolved, That by the repeated confession of Northern 
and Southern statesmen, * the existence of the Union is the chief 
guarantee of slavery;' and that the despots of the whole world 
have everything to fear, and the slaves of the whole world 
everything to hope, from its destruction, and the rise of a free 
Northern Republic. 

"Resolved, That the sooner the separation takes place the 
more peaceful it will be ; but that peaec or war is a secondary 
consideration, in view of our present perils. Slavery must be 
conquered, * Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. ' ' ' 



V. 

REV. DR. FULLER ON LINCOLN. 

The sentence at the end of Chapter XXXIX (page 285) 
appears to have been left unfinished by the author, and examin- 
ation of his manuscript did not find the words which he evi- 
dently intended to quote in proof of his assertion; but Dr. 
Fuller, writing to Salmon P. Chase about the Baltimore delega- 
tion's visit to Washington, said: ''From Mr. Lincoln nothing is 
to be hoped, except as j^ou can influence him. Five associations, 
representing thousands of our best young men, sent a delegation 
of thirty to Washington yesterday * * * and asked me to 
go with them as the chairman. We were at once cordially 
received. I marked the President closely. Constitutionally 
genial and jovial, he is wholly inaccessible to Christian appeals, 
and his egotism will forever prevent his comprehending what 
patriotism means." 

The delegation's call on Mr. Lincoln was in April, 1861. 
Dr. Fuller was an eminent Baptist divine, — not Presbyterian as 
stated in the text. Mr. Chase was Secretary of the Treasury 
in Mr. Lincoln's cabinet. As a United States Senator from 
Ohio he had voted for the reception (February, 1850) of a 
petition from inhabitants of one of the Northern States asking 
Congress to devise at once some plan for the immediate disso- 
lution of the Union. Mr. Seward, then Senator from New York, 
also voted for the reception of the petition. Daniel Webster, 
then Senator from Massachusetts, proposed that the petition 
have the following preamble : 

"Whereas, at the commencement of the session, you and 
each of you took your solemn oaths, in the presence of God 
and on the Holy Evangelists, that you would support the Con- 
stitution of the United States; now, therefore, we pray you 
to take immediate steps to break up the Union, and overthrow 
the Constitution of the United States as soon as you can." — 
T. K. 0. 



VI. 

LEE AND THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS. 

From address of Senator Norwood before the Alumni of 
Emory College, Oxford, Ga., July 20tli, 1875 : 

But one age has ever produced as grand a character and 
great a captain of martial hosts as Robert E, Lee, The age was 
a century ago — the man was Washington. The history of his 
deeds is enrolled on the imperishable tablet of the heart of 
man. The volume of his life is the political New Testament 
to the enthralled of every clime and creed. The wealth of his 
fame is the richest legacy ever bequeathed to the race of Adam. 
His Majesty, with lineal hand, confers nobility on crowned 
heads. On his brow, as he looks down on all mankind, save 
one, serenely rests in rival grace and honor, the warrior 's chap- 
let and the civic crown. That one excepted is Robert E. Lee, 
in every attribute the equal of the Father of His Country. 
Washington and Lee ! twin children of the same Commonwealth ; 
twin offspring of the same civilization; twin rebel-patriots in 
the same holy cause ; the very Gemini in the constellation of all 
of earth 's collected greatness. Washington was the first fruits 
and Lee the full harvest of Southern civilization. Washington 
was its rising and Lee its setting sun. The threads of their 
golden lives form the richest bordering — ^the beginning and 
the end — of the grandest fabric in all the varied woof and 
warp of time. Between their lives is bounded the only un- 
clouded day of perfect freedom. The one came up at the 
rise of the Republic — the other went down at its fall. Both 
drew their guiltless swords in defense of the dearest rights of 
man; the one, to establish the God-given right of self-govern- 
ment; the other, to maintain it. The one sheathed his sword 
not until the cause for which it was drawn was won, and joy 
smiled over the land; the other surrendered his sword not 
until that cause was lost, and darkness covered the earth 
again. 

But it is not for me to pronounce the panegyric of Lee, 
much less to atempt to draw his likeness. This generation can 
not give his true dimensions. We stand too near him, and he is 



APPENDIX 449 



SO rounded off that we lose sight of his grandeur in the symme- 
try of his proportions, as one who first looks on St. Peter's is 
deceived in its size by the perfection of its architecture. The 
hour and the man have not come to unveil the colossal monu- 
ment of his fame. The light of that day may never gladden 
our eyes. Standing at its base, as we now do, we can only 
see it swelling in majesty towards the heavens, for around its 
lofty summit are rolling still the angry but dissolving clouds 
of war. But his life in the completeness of its sweetness and 
its strength is before us. The rich-toned harp is strung, and 
its slumbering harmony woos the minstrel's master touch; but 
there is no living hand divine enough to sweep the diapason 
of its mighty tones. In the fullness of time, when the present 
generation shall sleep with their fathers, and their passions 
shall sleep with them; when detraction, weary in its hopeless 
task, shall slink away in shame; when the next generation as 
they move on, shall look back and contemplate his grand dimen- 
sions, some Pindar will be inspired to sing in fitting strain his 
triumphal ode and his encomium; some Homer to tell in verse 
of Attic purity and strength — yet not so pure and strong as 
he — the epic of his life; some Milton to test and prove his 
worth in the crucible of truth with his ''celestial fire." Yes — 

"His high and mountain majesty of worth 

Should be, and shall, survivor of his woe ; 

And from its immortality look forth 

In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow, 
Immeasurably pure beyond all things below." 

And yet, while his military renown, which was the least 
of his achievements — for he had conquered himself and ruled 
his own spirit — will brighten with every succeeding age, let us 
remember that it was not achieved by him alone. It is indis- 
solubly linked with the glory of as brave a band as ever drew 
the sword or fought beneath a plume. The fame of Leonidas 
rests upon the altar on which were richly offered up the lives 
of Sparta's three hundred bravest sons. The laurels of Marshal 
McDonald spring green and fresh on a league of Wagram's 
field, because it drank the blood of the immortal fifteen thousand 
who followed where he led. The daring deeds of Stonewall 



450 APPENDIX 



Jackson, his rapid movements which invested him, in the belief 
of the superstitious, with ubiquity, and his sudden descents on 
the foe, as he swept like a falcon to its prey, were only possible 
because high-born pride inspired his devoted band with a 
heroism that wearied out the stars in their march by night, and 
caught new strength from the rising sun as they rushed upon 
the flame of battle. So is it with Lee. His followers were 
nurtured in the same civilization with himself. Under the 
gray, in the Confederate rank and file, beat the great hearts 
of many a Curtius, Cocles and Ney. If his glory is like the 
sun, theirs is like the stars. When the splendor of the sun 
is veiled by night, we behold above us a few bright stars 
moving in grandeur over the field of Heaven, whose names and 
pavilions and goings forth are known ; but in their midst is seen, 
in close column, an undistinguished host pressing steadily 
onward, nameless and unknown; no one brilliant, but all to- 
gether shedding a halo around the skies. For ages ignorant 
man called them a congregation of vapors. But the astronomer, 
drawing nigh and scrutinizing their ranks in clear and passion- 
less thought, has returned to earth with the revelation that 
they are an army of stars, differing from each other only as 
"one star differeth from another star in glory." And when 
the historian, in after times, shall turn his admiring gaze from 
the lustre of the greatest captain of his age, and from his 
brilliant subalterns whose names and deeds are known, to 
scrutinize that mighty host who, nameless and unknown to fame, 
barefoot and sore, marched under the banner of the Southern 
Cross, he will, from their blended glory, resolve their individ- 
uality, and tell that they were heroes as great as ever fought 
beneath the Cross to rescue from the Crescent the Holy Sepul- 
chre, and patriots as pure in their devotion to liberty as the 
Fathers of the Republic. The civilization which made Lee 
possible, made it impossible for them to be else than patriots 
and heroes. ''They were swifter than eagles; they were 
stronger than lions." And while we ascribe all praise to the 
head that planned, equal honor is due to the hearts that dared 
and the hands that cleaved the way to immortality. 



ERRATA 



On page 17, read Jenkins for Penkins. 

On page 24, omit first sentence. 

On page 25, read Dust-and-Ashes for Dust and Ashes. 

On page 29, read fantastical for fantistical. 

On page 63, read assembled for assesmbled. 

On page 71, read Litt. for Ltt. 

On page 73, read deified for defied. 

On page 76, read exegetists for exegitists. 

On page 84, omit the words, — in the year, before the 
letters A. D. 

On page 86, read frailties for frailities. 

On page 99, read philanthropy for philanthrophy. 

On page 105, read perfidy for perfidity. 

On page 106, read divided for divide. 

On page 107, read ominous for omnious. 

On page 111, read I. 0. Us for I. 0. U's. 

On page 163, read eclectic for electic. 

On page 165, read vice-gerents for vice-gerants. 

On page 177, read tide for time. 

On page 185, read "is presented in these pages," for con- 
cluding words of last sentence. 

On page 208, read "Under other heads has been made," in 
place of 2d sentence in 2d paragraph. 

On page 233, read "in preceding pages," for "under State 
Rights." 

On page 258, read forty-two (in 2d par.) for forty-seven. 

On page 267, read owe (in last line) for owes. 

On page 287, read superstitions for superstitutions. 

On page 288, third sentence should begin, "As to whether." 

On page 296, the word "as" should be just before "the 
black cargo." 

On page 298, read confidants for confidant. 

On page 304, read quiet for quite. 

On page 308, tenth line from bottom, omit the word "and." 

On page 321, after "Brutus" should be a comma instead 
of"!" 

On page 327, read Khan for Kahn. 



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